B. Yeats read out poems from Tagore’s Gitanjali at William Rothenstein’s house in Hampstead, on 7 July 1912 (Ezra Pound was not present). But readers still seem to find the Introduction helpful as an entrée into Tagore’s life and work. So let it stand.

Northumberland, 2005

Further Reading

The standard edition of Tagore’s Collected Bengali Works is the rabīndra-racanābalī of Visva-Bharati, Calcutta. Vols. 1–26 were first published between 1939 and 1949, with two supplementary volumes in 1940–41; Vol. 27 appeared in 1965, and Vols. 28–30 in 1995–8. Visva-Bharati is also the publisher of volumes of Tagore’s letters, his collected songs, separate editions of individual works, and many books relating to Tagore. Now that Tagore is no longer in copyright, other editions of individual works are appearing in India, and collected editions on CD-ROM: Chirantan Rabindra Rachanaabali (Kolkata: Celcius Technologies) and Gitabitan Live (Tagore’s songs, with recordings, Kolkata: ISS Infoway). For many years, the standard edition (though it lacked any information or notes) of Tagore’s own English translations was Collected Poems and Plays, first published by Macmillan in London in 1936. This has been superseded by a massive and excellent annotated edition, published by the Sahitya Akademi in Delhi and edited by Sisir Kumar Das. Vol. 1 (Poems) appeared in 1994, and Vol. 2 (Plays, Stories, Essays) and Vol. 3 (A Miscellany) in 1996. The stories in Vol. 2 are only those that Tagore translated himself.

The main library and archive for Tagore, and the largest collection of his paintings, is at Rabindra Bhavana, Santiniketan, West Bengal. In London, the Tagore Centre UK has an interesting collection of Tagore books and documents.

The fullest bibliography of Tagore in English is still Rabindranath Tagore: A Bibliography by Katherine Henn (The American Theological Library Association, 1985); also useful is Dipali Ghosh, Translations of Bengali Works into English: A Bibliography (London and New York: Mansell Publishing Ltd, 1986).

For on-line material about Tagore, go especially to www.visvabharati.ac.in (an impressive and informative website), and to the Internet journal Parabaas at www.parabaas.com.

Please note that Calcutta is now known as Kolkata and has been so cited for works published since 2000.

Works by Tagore

For a useful list that includes older translations, see Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English, 2 vols., ed. Olive Classe (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000).

Final Poems, selected and trans. Wendy Barker and Saranindranath Tagore, preface by Wendy Barker, introduction by Saranindranath Tagore (New York: George Braziller, 2001).

Glimpses of Bengal: Selected Letters, newly trans. after Surendranath Tagore’s translation of 1921 by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson and with an introduction by Andrew Robinson (London: Papermac, 1991).

Gora (novel), trans. Sujit Mukherjee, with an introduction by Meenakshi Mukherjee (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1997).

The Home and the World (novel), trans. Surendranath Tagore (London: Macmillan, 1919); with an introduction by Anita Desai (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985); new edn with a preface by William Radice (London: Penguin Books, 2005).

I Won’t Let You Go: Selected Poems, trans. with an introduction by Ketaki Kushari Dyson (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1991).

My Reminiscences, Surendranath Tagore’s translation of 1912, revised and introduced by Andrew Robinson (London: Papermac, 1991).

Particles, jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems, trans. with an introduction by William Radice (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000; London: Angel Books, 2001).

The Post Office (play), trans. William Radice, set as a play-within-a-play by Jill Parvin (London: The Tagore Centre UK, 1995).

Quartet (novella), a translation by Kaiser Haq of caturanga (Oxford: Heinemann, 1993).

Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, ed. Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (London: Picador, 1997).

Selected Poems (various translators), ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri, introduction by Sankha Ghosh (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Selected Short Stories, trans. with an introduction by William Radice (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991, revised 1994, new edn 2005; New Delhi: Penguin India, 1995).

Selected Writings on Literature and Language (various translators), ed.