KENNEDY, Richard Hartley.

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Visconti: An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts. First edition, printed for the author in Calcutta while Kennedy was serving as a surgeon in the East India Company medical service. Better known for his later military, medical, and social writings, Kennedy here appears as an Anglo-Indian literary author, producing a historical verse tragedy from within the colonial print culture of early 19th-century Calcutta.Kennedy (1791-1865) rose through the Bombay medical establishment, becoming physician-general in 1842; after his retirement he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to imprisonment. He published on military, medical, and social subjects.The drama is set in the turbulent period preceding the Sack of Rome in 1527 and centres on the fictional Ubert Visconti, an exiled Milanese nobleman leading a band of condottieri. In his preface, Kennedy places the action against the wider European conflicts of the early 16th century, invoking the campaigns of Charles V and Francis I, unrest in the Alpine regions, and the factional divisions of Italy. The work combines historical reference with imaginative reconstruction, presenting Visconti as a figure shaped by exile, warfare, and shifting loyalties between Guelf and Ghibelline factions.

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