A Noble Queen (Vol. 1-3)

A Noble Queen is a novel written by Philip Meadows Taylor that illustrates one of the most important epochs in the history of the Dekhan. The book features the life of the noble Queen Chand Beebee whose memory is reverenced, not only as the preserver of Beejapoor, but for the heroic resistance she made to the Moghul armies in their first invasion of the Dekhan and siege of Ahmednugger.

Philip Meadows Taylor (1808-1876) was an administrator in British India and a novelist who made notable contributions to public knowledge of South India. Though largely self-taught, he was a polymath, working alternately as a judge, engineer, artist, and man of letters. While on furlough in England in 1840, he published the first of his Indian novels, Confessions of a Thug. This book was followed by a series of tales, Tippoo Sultaun (1840), Tara (1863), Ralph Darnell (1865), Seeta (1872), and A Noble Queen (1878), all illustrating periods of Indian history and society, and giving a prominent place to the native character, for which and the native institutions and traditions Taylor had a great regard and respect.