author
Lal Behari Day
1826–1894
Known for bringing rural Bengal vividly to life in English, this 19th-century writer, journalist, and missionary left behind work that still feels observant and humane. He is especially remembered for his fiction about village society and for collecting Bengali folk tales for a wider readership.
1 Audiobook
Folk-Tales of Bengal
by Lal Behari Day
About the author
Born in Sonapalasi in Bengal in 1824, Lal Behari Day became a writer, journalist, and Christian missionary whose career crossed literature, religion, and public debate. He studied in Calcutta and later became known as one of the early Indian authors to write extensively in English about everyday Bengali life.
His best-known book, Govinda Samanta; or, The History of a Bengal Raiyat—also published as Bengal Peasant Life—offers a detailed picture of village society, agriculture, family life, and class relations in 19th-century Bengal. He also helped preserve oral storytelling traditions through Folk-Tales of Bengal, a collection that introduced many Bengali stories to English-language readers.
Day's work stands out for its close attention to ordinary people rather than elites. That combination of social observation, storytelling, and cultural record makes him an important figure in both Indian writing in English and the early preservation of Bengali folklore.