Mahadevi Verma

NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
Asian Studies / Literature

Mahadevi Varma
Essays on Women, Culture, and Nation Anita Anantharam
6 x 9” Hardcover Level: College & Faculty US$109.99 / £64.99

260 pages March 2010

ISBN: 9781604976717

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Varma, Mahadevi, 1907-1987. Mahadevi Varma : essays on women, culture, and nation / edited and with an introduction by Anita Anantharam. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60497-671-7 (alk. paper) 1. Women--India--Social conditions. 2. Hindi language. 3. India--Social life and customs. I. Anantharam, Anita. II. Title. PK2098.V3M34 2010 305.420954--dc22 2009051867

Description
This edited volume of translations covers the major political essays of India’s first feminist Hindi poet. A devout follower and advocate of Gandhi, Mahadevi Varma is a household name in India and is a major woman of letters in the modern Hindi world. The essays collected in this volume represent some of Mahadevi Varma’s most famous writings on the “woman question” in India. The collection also includes an introduction to her life, with biographical notes, an analysis of her importance in the field of Hindi letters, as well as a selection of her poems – these latter because Mahadevi Varma made her mark in the world of Hindi literature through her poetry, and a volume of translations would be incomplete without a sampling of them. The introduction to the translated volume sketches Mahadevi Varma’s life and work and her significance to both the development of modern standard Hindi as well as to the nascent women’s movement underway in the 1920s in India. Little scholarly attention has been given in the academy outside of India to Varma’s numerous contributions to women’s education, to the development of modern standard Hindi, and to political thought during the Independence movement in late-colonial India. This volume of translations engages themes like language and nationalism,

Bibliography: Notes on Contributors Index About the Author Anita Anantharam is an assistant professor in the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at the University of Florida. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley; an MA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and a BA from Columbia University. Dr. Anantharam is also the author of Bodies that Remember: Women’s Indigenous Knowledge and Cosmopolitanism in South Asian Poetry (Syracuse University Press) and has published articles in Feminist Media Studies, the Journal of International Women’s Studies, and Gender and Language. 20 Northpointe Parkway, Suite 188, Amherst, New York 14228 www.cambriapress.com T [phone] F [phone] E [e-mail] An innovative, independent, non-subsidy publisher of academic research