Jagdish Gupta- Makers of Indian Literature

Prolific writer of short stories and novels, Jagadish Gupta (1886-1957) was ahead of his time in depiction of complexities of human psychology and relationships. He deliberately avoided the romantic style and description and contributed to the realistic trend in Bengali literature that was to characterize the modern age. He did not compromise his literary principles and realistic creed and was not a popular author in his own time. Although he did write some poetry and essays he is to be remembered for his extraordinarily powerful short stories. He deserves more critical attention than he has so far received.

Born 1944 Hiren Chattopadhyay is critic, novelist, dramatist and a prolific writer of Children's literature. A former Head of the Department of Bengali, Presidency College, Calcutta, he was the first to do intensive research work on Jagadish Gupta and wrote the first authentic book on this 19th century author: Bangla Upanyase Bastabata: Jagadish Gupta.

Tapati Gupta is Professor and Head, Department of English, University of Calcutta. Her doctoral thesis was on Shakespeare. A writer of critical essays in both Bengali and English, she also does art criticism. She has translated a number of modern Bengali short stories and edited volumes of translation. She also contributes to web magazines.

As a writer Jagadish Gupta is not very widely known. Today's readers may not be much acquainted with his works. Even while he was writing, his popularity fell short of his contemporaries such as Sailajananda Mukhopadhyay, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Bibhutibhusan Bando padhyay, Manik Bandopadhyay and others. Yet he had written a consi derable amount of poetry and short stories. His novels, though few by comparison, were enough in number as to attract attention. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that all the major critics have indisputably acknowledged the literary talent of Jagadish Gupta and have even pointed out that Gupta was the only successful representative of the new trend in creative writing that was initiated by the literary journals Kallol and Kali-Kalam. Rabindranath himself had praised Jagadish Gupta's talent. The aim of this book is to investigate briefly the reason why this eminent writer had won accolades from great personalities while remaining somewhat unknown to the common reader. A brief history of his life has also been given so that one may know the man behind the writer.

**Contents and Sample Pages**