History of Indian Poetry in English

Rosinka Chaudhuri

"A History of Indian Poetry in English explores the genealogy of Anglophone verse in India from its nineteenth-century origins to the present day. Beginning with an extensive introduction that charts important theoretical contributions to the field, this History includes extensive essays that illuminate the legacy of English in Indian poetry. Organized thematically, these essays survey the multilayered verse of such diverse poets as Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, Rabindranath Tagore, Ezekiel Moraes, Kamala Das, and Melanie Silgardo. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History also devotes special attention to the lasting significance of imperialism and diaspora in Indian poetry. This book is of pivotal importance to the development of Indian poetry in English and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike"-- "English poetry, it might safely be surmised, arrived in India from about the eighteenth century onward in the knapsacks, trunks, portmanteaus and bags of traders and adventurers intent on making their fortunes in the East. It then proceeded to establish itself among readers in exile and readers new to the English language with great and astonishing rapidity, fuelled in most part by the newspaper and periodical print culture that had spread through urban and semi-urban settlements in every part of the country. The first newspaper in India, Hicky's Bengal Gazette, reserved a section of the pages of its first issue in 1780 for a Poet's Corner, a demarcated space which would carry one or more poem in each issue for the short period of the paper's existence, a practice followed by every nineteenth- century newspaper published subsequently. The poem published in the first issue was called 'The Seasons', and described, expectedly, the English seasons; it took a few months for a long poem with the title 'A Description of India' to make an appearance here"--