Additional Reading

On Edmund Gosse:

• Wikipedia article
• Biographicon article

On Toru Dutt:

• Project Gutenberg Text
• The Dutt Family Album on Google Books
• Published in 1870, this book contains poems by Toru Dutt’s father, Grovin Chunder Dutt, his brothers, Hur Chunder Dutt and Greece Chunder Dutt, and a cousin, Oomesh Chunder Dutt.
• Preface: "The writers of the following pages are aware that bad poetry is intolerable, and that mediocre poetry deserves perhaps even a harsher epithet. There is a glut of both in the market. But they venture on publication, not because they think their verses good, but in the hope that their book will be regarded, in some respects, as a curiosity. They are foreigners, natives of India, of different ages, and in different walks of life, yet of one family, in whom the ties of blood relationship have been drawn closer by the holy bond of Christian brotherhood. As foreigners educated out of England, they solicit the indulgence of British critics to poems which on these grounds alone may, it is hoped, have some title to their attention."
• "An Epistolary Friendship"
• This article appeared in The Telegraph, a newspaper based in Calcutta, India, and explores the European influences on Toru Dutt. The article identifies Dutt’s spectrum of influences and education spanning a wide international range, which plays a major role in the superiority of her poetry.
• Wikipedia Article: Bengal Rennaissance
• Toru Dutt was a product of the ground-breaking Bengali Renaissance. Often compared to the 16th Century European Renaissance, the Bengal Renaissance (also called the Hindu Renaissance) was a major turning point for art, literature, and an overall modernization of traditional Bengali philosophies. Toru Dutt’s family, lifestyle, and writings all exemplify the great transition from traditional Bengali lifestyle to the enlightened 19th Century Bengali world.

Edmund Gosse

      In his “Introductory Memoir,” Gosse provides a glowing review of Dutt’s A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, another collection of her poetry, that he claims to have received when “the postman brought in a thin and sallow packet with a wonderful Indian postmark on it, and containing a most unattractive orange pamphlet of verse, printed at Bhowanipore, and entitled ‘A Sheaf gleaned in French Fields, by Toru Dutt.’” He goes on to say that the “shabby little book of some two hundred pages, without preface or introduction, seemed specially destined by its particular providence to find its way hastily into the waste-paper basket,” which is how most scholars and critics seemed to have received Dutt’s work. Thankfully, Gosse actually read her poetry and claimed, “When poetry is as good as this it does not much matter whether Rouveyre prints it upon Whatman paper, or whether it steals to light in blurred type from some press in Bhowanipore.” In other words, Gosse found Dutt’s work so fascinating and well-written that it did not matter that it was printed on cheap paper with blurred print at a relatively unknown Indian printing house; Dutt’s work should be noticed, studied, and remembered in literary history: “When the history of the literature of our country comes to be written, there is sure to be a page in it dedicated to this fragile exotic blossom of song.”

But why does Gosse’s opinion of Dutt matter?

      Edmund Gosse was an English biographer and critic. He was a lecturer in English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1884 to 1890 and librarian of the House of Lords from 1904 to 1914. Although today his scholarship is often found to be inaccurate and incomplete, he wrote with enthusiasm and wit about his literary subjects. However, Gosse is almost solely responsible for introducing English readers to Henrik Ibsen by translating his plays alongside Scottish critic William Archer, as well as introducing Britain to some modern French writers and painters in French Profiles (1905).  He was considered an expert on Thomas Gray, William Congreve, John Donne, Jeremy Taylor, and Coventry Patmore, who were all prominent English poets. Gosse wrote well-received biographies on these poets and others, including Sir Thomas Browne and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Father and Son (1907), his autobiography and considered by many to be Gosse’s best work, describes his relationship with his father, Philip Henry Gosse, an English naturalist and author of zoological works, whose biography Edmund had written in 1890. Father and Son partially inspired Peter Carey’s award-winning novel Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and served as the basis for Dennis Potter’s television play Where Adam Stood (1976). Included among Gosse's several volumes of verse are On Viol and Flute (1873) and New Poems (1879). He was knighted in 1925.

Information pulled from the Wikipedia article on Edmund Gosse and his Introduction to Dutt's "Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan"

Miscellaneous

Please visit these related posts for more information.

• Statement of Intention
• Edmund Gosse Information
• Additional Reading