This volume, the seventh in the series—Studies in Women Writers in English—is a grateful acknowledgment of the contribution and public recognition of the emerging voice of women in the arena of literature during the last few centuries, and especially in the latter half of the twentieth century.
The critique of work by women writers, introduced in the present volume, bears evidence to the growing critical attention towards authors writing outside the mainstream, in America, Canada, and especially in India, as well as Indian émigré writers who can be seen sharing similar awareness and feelings regarding the woman’s angst and aspirations.
The articles in this volume cover a wide range of women writers including one from Britain, i.e. the canonized and perennially popular Charlotte Brontë, three from America, i.e. Flannery O’Connor, widely known as the writer of ‘Southern Gothic’, Sylvia Plath and Tess Gallagher while Margaret Atwood figures, as usual. In addition to this, a bunch of Indian avant-garde writers of our own times, ranging from literary doyens like Shashi Deshpande and Anita Desai, to young avant-gardes, namely Githa Hariharan, Radhika Jha, Arundhati Roy, Chitra Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee and Shobha De, to the promising new generation of prizewinners like Jhumpa Lahiri, and Kiran Desai.
Since most of the authors discussed in these articles are prescribed in the English syllabi in the universities of India, both the teachers and the students will find the book extremely useful, and the general readers who are interested in literature in English and/or women writers will also find them intellectually stimulating.
Mohit K. Ray, a full Professor since 1982, and recently retired, is one of the seniormost professors in the country. He has four books and a large number of research papers published in scholarly journals in India and abroad, which reflect his wide range of scholarship.
Professor Ray has attended and chaired sessions as an invited participant in many international conferences, seminars, and colloquia held in different parts of the globe. He has edited several anthologies of critical studies. At present, he is working as the Chief Editor of Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd. Books authored by Mohit K. Ray include T.S. Eliot: Search for a Critical Credo (1978); Bhasa Bijnaner Godar Katha (in Bengali); Studies in Literary Criticism (2001); and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: A Critical Study (2005). He edits The Atlantic Critical Review, an international quarterly of global circulation.
Rama Kundu is a full Professor of English. She has been teaching in the Postgraduate Department of English, Burdwan University, West Bengal, since 1976. Besides being the author of five books, she has edited several books. She is the Editor of The Atlantic Literary Review, an internationally acclaimed journal of great repute. She has to her credit a large number of research papers published in scholarly journals and anthologies in India and abroad.
Books authored by Dr. Kundu include Vision and Design in Hardy’s Fiction (1984); Wrestling with God: Studies in English Devotional Poetry (1996); Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain (2005); New Perspectives on British Authors: From William Shakespeare to Graham Greene (2006); and Ånandamath O Såmpradåiktå (on Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay) (1987).
