A Concise History of Indian Literature in English

Contents: Introduction/Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 1.  The English writings of Raja Rammohan Ray/Bruce Carlisle Robertson. 2. The Hindu college: Henry Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt/Sajni Kripalani Mukherji. 3. The Dutt family Album: and Toru Dutt/Rosinka Chaudhuri. 4. Rudyard Kipling/Maria Couto. 5. Two faces of prose: Behramji Malabari and Govardhanram Tripathi/Sudhir Chandra. 6. The beginnings of the Indian Novel/Meenakshi Mukherjee. 7. The English writings of Rabindranath Tagore/Amit Chaudhuri. 8. Sri Aurobindo/Peter Heehs. 9. Two early-twentieth-century  women writers: Cornelia Sorabji and Sarojini Naidu/Ranjana Sidhanta Ash. 10. Gandhi and Nehru: the uses of English/Sunil Khilnani. 11. Verrier Elwin/Ramachandra Guha. 12. Novelists of the 1930 and 1940/Leela Gandhi. 13. R.K. Narayn/Pankaj Mishra. 14. Nirad C. Chaudhuri/Eunice deSouza. 15. Novelists of the 1950s and 1960s/Shyamala A. Narayan and Jon Mee. 16. On V.S. Naipaul on India/Suvir Kaul. 17. Poetry since Independence/Rajeev S. Patke. 18. From sugar to Masala: writing by the Indian Diaspora/Sudesh Mishra. 19. Looking for A.K. Ramanujan/Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. 20. Salman Rushdie/Anuradha Dingwaney. 21. After midnight: the novel in the 1980s and 1990s/Jon Mee. 22. The dramatists/Shanta Gokhale. 23. Five nature writers: Jim Corbett, Kenneth Anderson, Salim Ali, Kailash Sankhala, and M. Krishnan/Mahesh Rangarajan. 24. Translations into English/Arshia Sattar. Index.

"This book is a history of two hundred years of Indian literature in English, from 1800 to now. It is a revised, updated, text-only edition of An IIlustrated History of Indian Literature in English, which was published to wide acclaim in 2003.   

It starts by looking at the introduction of English into India's complex language scenario around the beginning of British rule. It then takes up the canonical poets, novelists, and dramatists, as well as many injustly forgotten figures, who have made significant contributions to the evolution of Indian literature in English.

The book comprises twenty-four chapters, written by some of India's foremost scholars and critics. Each chapter is devoted either to single Author (e.g. Kipling, Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, R.K. Narayan), or to a group of authors (e.g. the Dutt family of nineteenth-century Calcutta; the Indian diasporic writers of the twentieth century), or to a genre (e.g. the beginnings of the Indian novel; poetry since Independence).

Though the contributors are all experts in their chosen areas, they have written this book for the non-specialist general reader. Biographical information on major literary figures is provided, and in most cases their work is historically contextualized. The chapters can be read selectively (for example, to follow the development of a genre), or in the order in which they appear, which is chronological.

For anyone interested in the story of English in India, or in the finest English storytellers of India, this is the essential book." (jacket)