Sarojini Naidu: Selected Poetry and Prose

I really enjoyed this book.

The book is a collection of some of Sarojini Naidu's best poems and Speeches with some general notes and a few descriptions about her work. There is a systematic chronological order of events of her life including publication of her best works. I was specifically looking for the exact publication dates of her specific poems, but did not find any. For example, there's a mention of the period during which she wrote the poems that were published in "The Golden Threshold", but there's no mention of, for instance, exactly when within that period, was "Suttee" written or what's the exact date of the writing of "Palanquin Bearers." In order to study how her poetry evolved and matured and what are the factors that influenced her early and later writings,it is important to know the dates of her writing. I also wanted to have the background knowledge about her poems on widowhood (like Suttee)- why did she write what she wrote in her poem, Suttee? What was the social factors in India and the status of women at the time that she wrote the poem? But there's no in-depth explanation of the factors, cultural or other, that shaped her writing. Therefore, I feel that the information given in the book is repetitive and some of the things that the author says have been said many times by other authors. The internet is full of such information. The book is well written though and nicely arranged and of course, provides good insights into some of Sarojini's life and works but there's nothing that is new or unique to this book- something more rigorous about a certain aspect of her work. It's give a general idea of almost everything related to her life.

Nice