Rabindranath Tagore

The first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was born in Calcutta, India, and wrote in Bengali. An important modern figure, Tagore not only invigorated Bengali literature by rejecting classical forms; he also introduced Westerners to late 19th- and early 20th-century Indian poetry by translating his own work into English.