Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive Edition

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, 2008 - Literary Collections - 475 pages
This representative collection, the first of its kind, presents the majority of Derozio's poems with notes, and all available correspondence and journalism along with a detailed Introduction and critical comments. Apart from the two volumes of poetry that Derozio published in his lifetime, which have never been widely disseminated in their entirety, this edition brings together a number of new poems, essays, thoughts, and letters written to newspapers published both in his lifetime and posthumously. As a result, a fresh new picture emerges of a young man, energetic and inspired, who not only propelled a section of the Bengali elite into revolutionary reformism through his teaching, as is well known, but who also embodied, in his writing and philosophy, the birth of the modern. This book attempts to present a man and his moment in an entirely new and significant reading that places Derozio at the conceptual beginnings of an imagined nation that had begun to be conjured into existence through metaphor and image, rhetoric and philosophy, poetic practice, and political activism.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements
xiii
Note on the Text
xix
The India Gazette Poems 18228
3
Calcutta ought to have its name changed
9
I will not leave my silken thread
22
The Midnight Hour
28
In India Gazette 13 April 1826
36
3
44
Regret has neer brought back a vanished day
266
14
269
Poems in the India Gazette
273
The Sisterinlaw
280
Poems from The Kaleidoscope 182930
289
Poems in the Bengal Annual 18301
296
The Rain
307
A Quiet Place
313

her bowers
59
9
60
Tribute to Henry Meredith Parker
65
Tornout Leaves of a Scrap Book
79
The Bridal
91
The Maniac Widow
97
The roe that on the mountain dwells
103
Heres a Health to thee Lassie
109
Evening in August
116
The Orphan Girl
123
The Fakeer of Jungheera A Metrical Tale And Other Poems
172
Canto Second
199
Notes to Canto First
227
11
228
The Neglected Minstrel
242
The Deserted Girl
247
The Eclipse
253
Lines on the Unfortunate Death of Henry Neele Esq
260
Resignation Letter and Following Correspondence
319
Assault on Mr Derozio
327
Tit For Tat and the East Indian
336
East Indians Meetings
342
Second East Indians Meeting
348
Last Two Pieces from the East Indian in the India Gazette
357
Poems Published Posthumously
363
The Poetry of Human Life
369
Your hand is on the helmguide on young men
376
Notices Reviews and Responses
389
Review of The Fakeer of Jungeera
395
Review of The Fakeer of Jungheera continued 3 November 1828
403
India Gazette 7 December 1829
414
Derozios Poems
422
Material on Derozio Published Posthumously
424
The Weekly Examiner and The Calcutta Courier
441
The Courier and the Late Mr Derozio
454
Copyright

About the author (2008)

Rosinka Chaudhuri is Fellow in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.

Bibliographic information