Excerpts from Julie Banerjee Mehta’s article, published on 10 October 2026:   It was a serendipitous tribute to Rassundari Devi, the woman who wrote the first full-length autobiography in Bengali, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.   She was feted appropriately at the International Translation Day conference headlined “Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights”, organised by the International Society for Intercultural Studies and Research and Virasat Art Publication.   At the event, held on September 30 under the stewardship […]

To celebrate the 150th year of the first publication in 1876 of Rassundari Dasi/Devi’s historic and pioneering Bengali autobiography, Amar Jiban, Writers Workshop has published a new special edition of the only complete English translation of the book, now a prescribed text in many gender studies programmes. Originally translated by Enakshi Chatterjee, it has been revised and annotated by our director, Professor Ananda Lal, including not just Rassundari’s prose but also all her poems in full. The book is priced […]