The Rulers of India was a biographical book series edited by William Wilson Hunter and published from the Clarendon Press, Oxford. Hunter himself contributed the volumes on Dalhousie (1890) and Mayo (1891) to the series.
Background
William Hunter retired from his long career as a member of the Indian Civil Service in March 1887 and settled in Oxford, England. On 13 March 1889 Philip Lyttelton Gell, then Secretary to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, wrote to Hunter about
a project which has been for some time under the consideration of the Delegates, to publish a series giving the salient features of Indian History in the Biographies of successive Generals and Administrators.
Gell arranged the publication of the series by June 1889; with Hunter receiving £75 for each volume, and the author £25. Financial constraints forced the series to end at 28 volumes in spite of Hunter's disappointment about the same.