The first and second editions of this book appeared in 1962 and 1973 respectively. The first edition itself had come in the wake of my P.E.N. monograph, Indo-Anglian Literature (1943), and The Indian Contribution to English Literature (1945). Even earlier, I had for over a decade been writing in journals off and on about the Indo-Anglians. I may say then, the present work has been 50 years a-growing.
Since the publication of the second edition, there has been witnessed a burst of activity in Indian writing in English and something akin to a global proliferation of interest in this new literature. A mere reissue, I thought, would hardly serve the urpose. But I felt also that the time hadn't come for any drastic revaluations. Many of the older writers have survived triumphantly, and there have been significant new arrivals as well. The long Postscript is meant to cover the last ten years, and bring the survey up-to-date.
In writing the Postscript, I have taken the help of my daughter, Prema Nandakumar, whose annual surveys have appeared in the Sahitya Akademi's journal, Indian Literature. She has, besides, surveyed the literature of the seventies, as also Indian writing in English since Independence. Sentences from our articles and book reviews elsewhere have been here-and-there incorporated in the Postscript which, although designed as a supplement to the main survey, can also stand on its own as an assessment of Indian writing in English during the decade it won general recognition as a distinctive literature of India.
I am grateful to Shri O. P. Ghai of Sterling Publishers for the buoyancy and faith with which he has taken up the publication of this new edition.
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