The series—Studies in Women Writers in English—is a grateful acknowledgement of the contribution and public recognition of the emerging voice of women in the arena of English literature during the last few centuries, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. Women writers across the globe have made their distinctive mark, with their own perception of life—be it feminine, feminist or female.
The critique of work by women writers introduced in the present volume, the eighth in the series, bears evidence to the growing critical attention towards authors writing outside the mainstream, in America, 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 twenty-one essays in this volume cover a wide range of women writers including five from Britain, i.e. the canonized and perennially fascinating Emily Brontë, the lonely Victorian talent Christina Rossetti, the pioneer feminist author Virginia Woolf, the poet Mina Loy, and Carol Ann Duffy, a poet of our times. In addition to these mainstream writers, three authors from America, i.e. Sylvia Plath, the celebrated poetic talent who chose to drop off before her time, and Jane Kenyon composing poetry in our times also figure alongside the towering Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, while Jean Rhys stands apart from the spatial categories as she writes with the Caribbean islands ‘in her bones’, even though settled in England. Besides, we have here a bunch of Indian writers, including both canonized precursors like Toru Dutt, Kamala Markandaya, and avant-gardes of our own times, writing either from outside or from within the heart of the country—ranging from doyens like Kamala Das, Bapsi Sidhwa, Shashi Deshpande and Anita Desai—to young innovators like Arundhati Roy or Tehmina Durrani of Pakistan, as well as established emigre writer like Bharati Mukherjee.
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 them extremely useful. 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 Ānandamath O Sāmpradāiktā (on Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, 1987).
