The Quiet Genius of Toru Dutt

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Toru Dutt was the first female Indian poet to write in English and French. She died young, at only 21, but left behind a volume of work.

Toru Dutt wrote her final letters at 21, wracked by the same cough that had taken her brother and sister. She wrote in French, to her closest friend in Europe, Mary E.R. Martin; one of the few people outside her family who knew of her work. It’s a pained letter, and yet she had accepted her fate, invoking the image of Sita wandering alone in the forest. She died on August 30, 1877.

Her life was a series of lonely achievements. She was the first female Indian poet to compose both in English and in French. The first Indian woman to study at Cambridge (at a time when the university was only beginning to open its doors to women). The first  Indian to write a novel in French. Perhaps she was also the first example of an emigrant returning to India and pining for another land, knowing not fully which is home. And for all her achievements, the latter part of her works were published and received only posthumously.

Toru’s biography was  written 43 years after her death.

Toru’s family house in Calcutta, where she returned after some years spent in Europe, was a place for her to throw herself into writing and translation. It was here that she finished ‘A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields’, a collection of more than 150 poems she had translated from French to English. It was printed in Bhowanipore, Calcutta, with no introduction, on basic, orange-hued paper; that was then sent to one of the finest literary journals in Britain at the time – the Examiner. There, the sheaf was gleaned and nearly binned for its presentation– until it reached critic and poet Edmund Gosse.



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4 Comments

  • I’d had it in the back of my mind to look her up, having read out some of her work for my audio book work. And here you’ve dropped it right into my lap! Thanks! Perhaps you should highlight more women like her, whose achievements are so out of the ordinary. maybe Noor Inayat Khan, for example?

    There are so many extraordinary women who have left forgotten legacies…..

  • I remember when I was in X class during the academic year 1969-70, our English teacher and Head Master, Mr. D.Harichandra rao of S P V R High Schoool, Draksharama, East Godavary District, Andhrapradesh in 1970, narrated the story of Casuarina Tree. I can still remember and cannot forgot that. This type of good articles and writers should not be forgotten, I wish the team of Madras Courier all the best and publish more and more such interesting articles in the days to come.

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