First published in 1913 with the famous introduction by W. B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali is undeniably a turning point in the history of English literature. Ezra Pound noted its appearance as 'an event in the history of English poetry' and its publication instantaneously made Tagore a household word in the Western world. The Swedish Academy immediately recognized the unmatched craftsmanship of Tagore and honours him with the Nobel Prize in the same year "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".
This edition of Gitanjali is the first of its kind which combines the facsimile of the original manuscript from the Rothenstein Collection of Harvard University, thirty-five rarest of rare photographs of Tagore collected from various archived resources and Tagore's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. This collector's edition, published in connection with the poet's 150th birth anniversary, is a unique addition to the 21st century Tagore studies and will work as a definitive companion for every Tagore researchers, poetry lovers and collectors in general.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright. He is the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Though primarily recognized as a poet, Tagore also published novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. He is perhaps the only litterateur in the world who penned anthems of two countries - India and Bangladesh. He is the founder of Visva-Bharati University, one of India's premier institutions. |
