Toru Dutt



Toru Dutt (Bengali: তরু দত্ত) (March 4, 1856 – August 30, 1877) was an Indian poetess who wrote in English and French.

Childhood
Toru Dutt was the youngest girl of Govin Chunder Dutt, a retired Indian Officer. She was born on the fourth of March 1856. She spent her childhood in Calcutta, her birth town, with her elder sister Aru and brother Abju.

She remained in Calcutta till November 1869, after which she and her sister Aru traveled to France, Italy and then England. She went to a school in France, for the first time of her life, and had an intimacy with French during that period.

Achievements
After publication of several translations and literary discussions, she published A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, a volume of French poems she had translated into English, with Saptahiksambad Press of Bhowanipore, India in 1876. Eight of the poems had been translated by her elder sister Aru. This volume came to the attention of Edmund Gosse in 1877, who reviewed it quite favorably in the Examiner that year. Sheaf would see a second Indian edition in 1878 and a third edition by Kegan Paul of London in 1880, but Dutt lived to see neither of these triumphs. She wrote many poems for the rank and the file.

At the time of her death, she left behind two unpublished novels— Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers (thought to be the first novel in French by an Indian writer) and Bianca, or the Young Spanish Maiden (thought to be the first novel in English by an Indian woman writer)—in addition to an unfinished volume of original poems in English, Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan. Her father, Govind Chunder Dutt, ensured that these works would be published posthumously: Bianca in Calcutta’s Bengal Magazine (1878), Le Journal by Didier of Paris (1879), and Ancient Ballads with Kegan Paul (1882).The poem 'Our Casuarina Tree' is considered as her biography.

Siblings
She had two siblings Aru -her sister and Abju-her brother.She obviously had a tragic life.Her siblings and she too were affected by some disease supposedly tuberculosis.Thus she lost both of her siblings at a tender age and she too died young.

Publications

 * Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan. London: Kegan Paul, 1882.
 * Toru Dutt: Collected Prose and Poetry. Ed. Chandani Lokugé.  New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.