An open library of thought
Seek the infinite within the finite world.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
These records present three books that Tagore himself published in English for international readers. His Bengali poems, songs, novels, plays, short stories, letters and essays, far larger in scope, are not indexed here; this is a selection, not a complete bibliography.
011910–1912
Tagore made these English prose versions himself in 1912, choosing poems from the Bengali Gitanjali of 1910 and from other collections. Published in London with an introduction by W. B. Yeats, the book led to the Nobel Prize of 1913; its English is freer and plainer than the rhymed Bengali songs.
021913
Published in 1913, the papers recast Bengali talks given to the pupils of his school at Santiniketan; friends translated some passages, and most papers were read at Harvard University. Tagore warns in his preface that he writes neither as a scholar nor as a systematic philosopher.
031917
The lectures were given during tours of Japan and the United States in 1916 and 1917, while the First World War was being fought, and were published in 1917 with the poem The Sunset of the Century. Their critique provoked hostile reactions in parts of the Japanese and American press and among Indian nationalists.