Una Marson was born and grew up in Jamaica. After her work on the editorial staff of the Jamaica Critic in 1926, she founded her own magazine The Cosmopolitan, which she also edited. Having established herself in Jamaica, Marson moved to London in 1932 to experience life outside Jamaica and to find a wider audience for her literary work. She lodged with Harold Arundel Moody, and became involved with the League of Coloured Peoples. She worked for the League as its unpaid Assistant Secretary, organising student activities, receptions, meetings, trips and concerts. During her stay in England from Marson continued to publish on feminist issues, as she had in Jamaica. She also became increasingly interested in discussions about race, eugenics and the colour-bar, focussing on the most pressing issues faced by black migrants living in Britain.

During her first stay in Britain, Marson organized, staged and compered an evening of entertainment at the Indian Students Hostel. The line-up included the American singer John Payne, the pianist Bruce Wendell and the Guyanese clarinettist Rudolph Dunbar. By 1937 she was editor of the League’s journal and its spokesperson, working closely with Moody. Marson was also a member of the International Alliance of Women for Equal Suffrage and Citizenship and the British Commonwealth League (BCL). At the latter she met Myra Steadman, daughter of the suffragette Myra Sadd Brown. The All India Women’s congress was affiliated with the BCL. During the period she also became involved with the Left Book Club and encountered the writings of Rabindranath Tagore.

After two years in Jamaica, Marson returned to Britain in 1938. In 1939 Marson was offered work by the BBC as a freelancer for the magazine programme 'Picture Page' to arrange interviews with visitors from the Empire. She also drafted three-minute scripts for the programme. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Marson lectured occasionally at the Imperial Institute and worked as a talks and script writer for the BBC. In 1941 she was appointed full-time programme assistant to the BBC Empire Service, where she hosted and coordinated the broadcasts under the title 'Calling the West Indies'.

In November 1942 George Orwell asked her to contribute to the six-part poetry magazine 'Voice', broadcast on the Indian Section of the BBC’s Eastern Service, with Marson taking part in the fourth programme dedicated to American poetry, which also featured William Empson. She read her poem ‘Banjo Boy’. In the December edition of the programme she appeared alongside M. J. Tambimuttu, T. S. Eliot, Mulk Raj Anand, Narayana Menon and William Empson. This led Una to devise a similar programme for the West Indies, titled 'Caribbean Voices', which in later years under the direction of Henry Swanzy would introduce authors such as George Lamming, Sam Selvon, V. S. Naipaul and Edward Kamau Braithwaite to a wider audience. The programme ran for fifteen years until 1958. She returned to Jamaica in 1945 and died in 1965 from a heart attack.

Ernest Dowson was a poet. In the late 1890s, Dowson also translated French literature into English (including Zola, Balzac and Voltaire). He was one of a batch of young poets who represent the work of the last decade of the nineteenth century in England. He was intimately involved with the Rhymers' Club in London during this period, but died at a young age (32) from a combination of drink, depression and ill-health resulting from severe financial problems.

In 1886, Dowson entered Queen's College, Oxford. In his second year, an Indian student called Satis Chandra Mookerjee joined the college. As a result of his praise of bhang, Dowson and his friends experimented with cannabis. Dowson remained in touch with Mookerjee; they were both part of a group of four who visited the Gaiety Theatre in March 1889 (see Dowson letter to Arthur Moore, 24 March 1889).

Dowson left Oxford in 1888 and it was in London, in September 1890, that Lionel Johnson introduced Dowson to the Primavera poet and former Oxford student Manmohan Ghose. From letters to various friends, it appears that Dowson became quite enamoured with Ghose, describing him variously as 'charming' and 'beautiful lotus-eyed'. His correspondence mentions Ghose until the middle of 1891 when Dowson was planning to bring out a book called 'The Book of the Rhymers Club' which he hoped would include Ghose's work. When the book did come out, Ghose's name was not among the contributors who included Lionel Johnson, T. W. Rolleston, Arthur Symons and W. B. Yeats.

Poet and Bookseller

Humayun Kabir was a poet, novelist, educationist and politician. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford and graduated in 1931. Kabir had been heavily involved with the Oxford Union during his student days, having been elected secretary in 1930 and librarian in 1931. He made his farewell speech on the motion: 'This House condemns the Indian policy of His Majesty's Government'. Kabir had also been involved with the student newspapers, the Isis and the Cherwell, and the Oxford Majlis journal, Bharat.

Upon his return to India, Kabir taught at a number of universities. He also became involved in trade union politics and was elected to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1937. He took up a number of government posts after 1947, including Minister for Education.

Kabir published a book of poems in Oxford in 1932, and continued to write poetry, short stories and novels after his return to India. He also wrote essays and was a well-respected orator. He died in Kolkata in 1969.

A novelist, poet and travel-writer, T. Ramakrishna (Pillai) came from South India. He was connected to various high-ranking British officials who wrote the introductions to his works. Ramakrishna met Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, and dedicated his 1896 book of poems 'Tales of Ind and other Poems' to Tennyson.

As a student at Oxford, Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy helped Robert Bridges (poet laureate) select the 'oriental' poems for The Spirit of the Man (London: Longmans, 1915). On 29 November 1915, Suhrawardy, with D. H. Lawrence and Philip Arnold Heseltine, visited Lady Ottoline Morrell. [A photo of which, taken by Lady Ottoline, is available in the National Portrait Gallery.] Other guests recorded in the visitors' book that day included Aldous Huxley.

Suhrawardy was a poet and art critic, who also worked as a diplomat. He was the son of Justice Sir Zahid Suhrawardy and Khujesta Akhtar Banu and nephew of Abdullah Al-Mamun Suhrawardy who had also studied at Oxford. Suhrawardy was a graduate of Presidency College, Calcutta, before sailing for England. After graduating from Oxford, he taught English at the Imperial University of St Petersburg and at the Women's University in Moscow. Amongst his students was Alexander Kerensky, the Prime Minister of Russia. Suhrawardy was a member of the producers' committee at the Moscow Art Theatre and worked with the composer, Igor Stravinsky. He witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1919 and then moved to France. He returned to India in the 1920s to pursue research in art, teaching in Calcutta and Hyderabad. He also translated works from Russian and Chinese into English.

His younger brother, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, who was at Oxford at the same time, was Prime Minister (the post now called Chief Minister) of Bengal in 1946 and Prime Minister of Pakistan, 1956-7. Due to similar sounding names and the same initials with his brother, Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy is often known as Shahid Suhrawardy. He should also not be confused with his uncle Sir Hassan Suhrawardy.

Born in 1824, Madhusudan Dutt was the son of a lawyer. In 1830, he moved to Calcutta and later studied at Hindu College where he began to write poetry in English and Bengali. In 1842, his poems began to be published in literary magazines in India. He sent some to the editors of Blackwood's Magazine and Bentley's Miscellany in Britain but they were not published. He greatly admired Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley and had a fierce ambition to visit England. Dutt began to consider conversion to Christianity when his father proposed an arranged marriage to a Hindu girl. In 1843, Dutt ran away from home and was baptised. He moved to Madras and married an orphan called Rebecca.

Having returned to Calcutta, Dutt published the epic historical poem Meghnad-Badh-Kabya in Bengali, for which he is most famous. Having found little success in his poetry written in English, Dutt's works in Bengali were more favourably received. Dutt's Bengali poetry and plays influenced and encouraged others like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and later Rabindranath Tagore.

He still had a strong desire to go to Britain and so raised enough money to leave in 1862. Initially he stayed with Manomohun Ghose and Satyendranath Tagore in London and was admitted to Gray's Inn. His second wife, Henrietta, and children joined him in 1863. Beset by financial difficulties and facing racial prejudice, they moved to Versailles. Dutt continued to return to London to attend the Bar dinners and lived in Shepherds Bush for a while. He was called to the Bar on 17 November 1866. Dutt sailed back to India in 1867 and tried to pursue a legal career. He died in 1873.

Toru Dutt was born into the well known Dutt family of Rambagan. Many of her uncles and cousins as well as her father, Govin Chunder Dutt, published poetry and prose. Her education and upbringing were rather unusual for even progressive mid-nineteenth century Bengal. Toru Dutt’s family had converted to Christianity, which in some ways led to a feeling of social alienation for the Dutt family in India. In 1869, a few years after the death of their elder brother Abju, Govin Chunder Dutt took his wife and two young daughters Aru and Toru to travel in Europe. They spent a few months in Nice where both sisters attended a French Pension and learnt French. In 1870 the family travelled to Brompton, England via Boulogne.  It was unusual for Indian women of the time to travel abroad and also to gain an education abroad. 

In England both sisters continued their French Studies. While living in Cambridge between 1871-3 they attended the Higher Lectures for Women at the University. Toru Dutt met and befriended Mary Martin, the daughter of Reverend John Martin of Sidney Sussex College. The friendship that developed between the two girls at this time continued in their correspondence after Toru’s return to India, until the time of Toru’s death.  Toru Dutt seemed to have acquired a good set of acquaintances whilst attending the lectures at Cambridge as she mentions quite a few names in her correspondence with Mary Martin after her return to India.  Amongst these names are Mr and Mrs Baker, the proprietors of Regent House where the Dutt family lodged in Cambridge; the son, Reginald, and daughters of Rev H. Hall of St Paul’s Church, Cambridge; Mr Clifford who later comes to officiate at the church near the Dutt’s Garden House outside Calcutta, and Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb who was then Professor of Greek at Trinity.  

A collection of Toru Dutt’s correspondence includes her letters written from England to her cousins in India. Toru Dutt was a natural linguist and in her short life became proficient in Bengali, English, French and, later on, Sanskrit.  Although she died at an exceptionally early age she left behind an impressive collection of prose and poetry.  Her two novels, the unfinished  Bianca or The Young Spanish Maiden written in English and Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arvers, written in French, were interestingly based outside India with non-Indian protagonists.  Her poetry comprises of A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields consisting of her translations into English of French poetry, and Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan which compiles her translations and adaptations from Sanskrit literature.

A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields was published in 1876 by the Saptahik Sambad Press, Bhowanipore without any preface or introduction.  At first this collection attracted little attention but later it famously fell into the hands of Edmund Gosse who gave it a splendid review in The Examiner of August 1876.  When her collection of Sanskrit translations Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan was published posthumously in 1882 Edmund Gosse wrote an introductory memoir for it.  In this he wrote of Toru: ‘She brought with her from Europe a store of knowledge that would have sufficed to make an English or French girl seem learned, but which in her case was simply miraculous’ (Gosse, p xiii).

Spender was educated at University College School in Oxford. In his last year at school, he was invited by T. S. Eliot to contribute to The Criterion. In 1930 he travelled in Germany with Christopher Isherwood. On a visit to England from Germany in December 1930, he met John Lehmann. He became part of a politically conscious group of poets, which also included W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Cecil Day Lewis. He was a propagandist for the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1936 and 1937.

As a member of the Left Book Club he met South Asians on the Left. Spender’s Forward from Liberalism (1937) was one of the Left Book Club’s most noteworthy publications. From 1939-41 he assisted Cyril Connelly in editing Horizon. He also published some poems in Tambimuttu’s Poetry London. He was co-editor of Encounter from 1953-66. Spender visited Bombay in the 1950s and met Shrimati Sophia Wadia (c.1901-1986), widow of B.P. Wadia (1881-1958), leader of the United Lodge of Theosophists. Both were founder members of the International PEN Club and contributors to the Indian PEN Club magazine.

During his visit Spender also met with Dominic Moraes (1938-2004), the son of Frank Moraes the editor of The Times of India in Bombay. Impressed with his poems Spender mentored Moraes’ early work and recommended him to Neville Coghill at Oxford. Moraes went up to Jesus College, Oxford and went on to win the Hawthornden Poetry Prize before moving to London in the 1960s, making a name for himself as a poet and Soho habitué.

In 1970 Spender became Professor of English at UCL and a founder of Index on Censorship in 1972. He was knighted in 1983.

Stevie Smith was a novelist and poet. Well connected in the literary world of the 1930s and 1940s, she was acquainted with M. J. Tambimuttu and Mulk Raj Anand, among others.