Kolkata
Calcutta was the capital of British India until 1911 and the centre of its newspaper culture, which is where the young Kipling worked. His sketches of the city are journalism rather than fiction, and they are sharper for it. Tagore, born in the city, wrote in Bengali and translated his own poems into English.
The National Library is one of the largest in India and holds the records of the colonial administration as well as an enormous periodical collection. Anyone trying to understand how nineteenth-century India was described, rather than imagined, should begin with the newspapers.
A library to check
- National Library of India — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Kolkata
- Gitanjali — Rabindranath Tagore, 1912. Devotional poetry that changed the way English readers thought about Indian writing.
- The City of Dreadful Night and Other Places — Rudyard Kipling, 1891. Early Kipling on the machinery of a colonial city, sharper and less sentimental than his later work.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.