History of Indian Literature in English

by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (Editor)

From Ram Mohan Ray to Arundhati Roy, two hundred years of Indian literature in English are covered in this volume, essential for anyone interested in this increasingly important literary tradition. Spanning a period from 1800 to the present, this collection of historical essays covers the canonical Indian poets, novelists, and dramatists writing in English―names like Rudyard Kipling, Rabrindanath Tagore, R.K. Narayan, and Salman Rushdie―as well as lesser-known literary figures―scientists, social reformers, anthropologists―who have made significant contributions to the evolution of Indian literature in English. The essays in this volume are arranged chronologically and are devoted to a single author, a group of authors, or to a genre. The book includes 150 rare and interesting photographs and sketches of writers and their contexts.

Genres: India

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2003

About the author

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore in 1947. He has published six collections of poetry in English and two of translation — a volume of Prakrit love poems, The Absent Traveller, recently reissued in Penguin Classics, and Songs of Kabir (NYRB Classics). His Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992) has been very influential. He has edited several books, including History of Indian Literature in English (Columbia University Press, 2003) and Collected Poems in English by Arun Kolatkar (Bloodaxe Books, 2010). His collection of essays Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History was published by Permanent Black in 2012. A second book of essays, Translating the Indian Past (Permanent Black), appeared in 2019.

Mehrotra was nominated for the post of Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford in 2009. He came second behind Ruth Padel, who later resigned over allegations of a smear campaign against Trinidadian poet Derek Walcott (who had himself earlier withdrawn from the election process).

Mehrotra has translated more than 200 literary works from ancient Prakrit language, and from Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati.

Reviews

[Alok Mishra]

I have been explicitly looking for books on Indian English literature and apart from the efforts that were made by Sri Srinivas Iyengar Ji, I could not find anything worth (notable mentions are Sri Naik and one or two others). However, this book by MR Mehrotra is certainly worth a look and a deep reading. I could find many things notable, well-written and wonderfully explained. However, we do need a modern and current version of this book with all that is going around in the literary domain (English) because it lacks the 2nd decade of 21st-century and even lacks depth about the 1st decade as well.

[Ananya Mishra]

This book was a phenomenal read. Very expansive and contextualised. A beautifully crafted collection of essays by some of the very best writers in the field. Probably one of the best pieces of work on this subject matter.