Gitanjali

One of the greatest works of poetry in modern times, Tagore’s Gitanjali was initially published in Bengali on August 14, 1910, as a collection of 157 poems. However, while translating it in English later on, Gurudev, as Tagore was popularly known as, shortened it to a collection of 103 poems which included 53 poems from the original ‘Gitanjali’ and 50 other poems from nine of his other books that included those from his famous drama ‘Achalyatan’, ‘Naibedya’, ‘Kheya’ and ‘Gitimalya’.The translated version of Gitanjali, meaning ‘an offering of songs’, soon became very famous and was widely translated. The English version of Gitanjali was first published in November 1912 by the India Society of London, and in 1913, Tagore was honoured with the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Indian to receive the coveted award and the first non-European to win it. A Tagore classic—a poetry collection that is part of Words of the Master, a set of 12 books that the Master himself has translated.