Robert Armitage Sterndale

Robert Armitage Sterndale (30 June 1839 – 3 October 1902) was a British naturalist, artist, writer and statesman who worked in British India before becoming governor general of St. Helena. His books on animals inspired Rudyard Kipling.

Early life

Robert was born on 30 June 1839, the fourth son of Margaret Craufuird (1806–1866) and William Handley Sterndale (1791–1866) from Ashford-in-the-Water in Derbyshire, who went to India to become an indigo planter in Tirhoot, Bihar. Robert studied privately before qualifying for the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and going to India in 1856 to work in the finance department.

One of his brothers Handley Bathurst Sterndale (1829–1878) was an archaeologist who suggested connections between the monuments made by vanished Polynesian civilizations and relics in India, Britain and Central America. His sister Agnes married Sir Cecil Beadon in 1860.

British India

Sterndale volunteered with local regiments during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and became a deputy collector in August 1859. He later became an assistant settlement officer and then in the finance departments at Nagpur, Calcutta and Punjab. He became Accountant General for Bombay in January 1884 and then at Madras in 1887.

Naturalist

A keen sportsman and big-game hunter, he wrote several books on natural history including on the mammals of India, republished in a new and abridged edition by Frank Finn. He was one of the first editors of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. His work Seonee, or Camp Life on the Satpura Range published in 1877 influenced the work of Rudyard Kipling and inspired many scenes in the Jungle Book. He also wrote for newspapers contributing to The Asian. An accomplished artist, he made pen sketches, water colours and oil paintings of natural history subjects and was a friend of the artist John Trivett Nettleship. He illustrated two books of E. H. Aitken and contributed a few illustrations to the Lays of Hind by "Aliph Cheem" apart from his own books.