Interest in the life and work of the Nobel-Prize-winning writer, Rabindranath Tagore, is now enjoying a revival after many years of neglect outside India. This selection of some 350 letters spanning Tagore's entire life is the first to be available to English readers. The letters are intended to show as many facets of his experience, interests and ideas as possible, and will be a valuable source of information, not only for the understanding of the complexity of Tagore's personality, but also of the times in which he lived.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."
Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to topics political and personal. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems: India's Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh's Amar Shonar Bangla.