Rabindranath Tagor was the fourteen child of a wealthy Indian family, which after centuries of internal disquiet was experiencing under British rule a necessary breathing space of peace and order. But it was as the author points out, "the peace of the desert. India had ceased to be creative. Politically, she was not even aware of the loss of national freedom, and culturally, she hugged the trappings of the new servitude or blindly clung to the shackles of the old."

He was born in 1861, eight years before Mahatma Gandhi. The Mahatmas place in history is secure but history is secure but his great contemporary is less well known though he won the Nobel Prize and the admiration of the great literary figures of the West, among them being Yeats and Pound. He contrived to show India to herself and the importance of his contribution to her reawakening was subtle and deep-releasing and feeding hidden fountains of creative activity in fields, which the politician is powerless to exploit.

His first impact was followed, in the West, by a decline of interest; but his stature in East has grown and this detailed study of his life and work gives a picture of the complete man. He was a poet, playwright, storyteller, musician, painter and educator; and his many achievements were but partial expressions of a restless vitality and on inexhaustible zest living.