W. B. Yeats was a prolific and prominent Anglo-Irish poet and literary figure.

At various stages of his life, Yeats was influenced by and influenced Indians. As a young adult, Yeats was drawn to Theosophy and met Mohini Chatterjee when he visited Dublin in 1885. After this meeting, Yeats wrote three poems (published in 1889) that refered to India: ‘The Indian to his Love’, ‘The Indian upon God’, and ‘Anushuya and Vijaya’. Yeats was further influenced by his reading of the great fourth century Indian poet and dramatist, Kalidasa. Yeats later wrote a poem entitled 'Mohini Chatterjee' (published in 1933 in the collection The Winding Stair and Other Poems).

In 1912, William Rothenstein wrote to Yeats about the need for an introduction for Tagore's Gitanjali which was to be published by the India Society. Yeats sent his introduction to Gitanjali from Dublin. Yeats was instrumental in having a performance of Tagore’s play, The Post Office, performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in October 1913. As he was so prominent in literary circles, Yeats was also linked to other Indian poets such as Sarojini Naidu and Manmohan Ghose, and encouraged a young Indian student at Oxford, G. K. Chettur, to publish his poems in 1922 (for which Chettur dedicated the anthology to Yeats).

Later in life (in the 1930s), Yeats became friends with Purohit Swami. Yeats wrote an introduction to Purohit Swami's book about his Master, Shri Bhagwan Hamsa. They translated the Upanishads together in Majorca in 1935-6. Yeats introduced Purohit Swami to his friend the stage actress Margot Ruddock, who became a disciple of the Swami's.

Despite his many connections, Yeats did not manage to visit India in his lifetime.

Arthur Symons was a British poet, critic and editor prominent in fin-de-siècle London. He is regarded as one of the foremost literary critics of the 1890s.

In London Symons made some of his early literary contacts through the Browning Society, including the eccentric philologist F. J. Furnivall. From him he secured the job of editing various scholarly editions of Shakespeare, while another commission resulted in his first critical work, An Introduction to the Study of Browning (1886). His first book of verse, Days and Nights, followed three years later and was dedicated to his friend and primary influence Walter Pater. Following the principles of the master, from here on his poetry was to move away from the character verse of Browning towards the impressionistic drama of the subjective moment. His total abandonment of moral themes and an objective tone earned him the ire of conservative critics who harangued the so-called ‘Decadent’ movement for its obsession with an aesthetic life lived ‘against nature’. His critical writings stood among the most respected of their day, and his ‘The Symbolist Movement in Literature’ of 1899 arguably counts as the most influential aesthetic treatise of the decade.

He was a major contributor to the Yellow Book and edited its successor, the Savoy, in collaboration with Aubrey Beardsley. His acquaintance embraced the entire ambit of London literary life, with Yeats and Conrad being particularly close. In 1896 at the home of Edmund Gosse he met Sarojini Naidu, who became his confidante and protégé. They corresponded after her return to India, and in 1905 he saw her book of verse The Golden Threshold into print. His Figures of Several Centuries (1916) also features an essay on her poetry.

In 1908 he suffered a nervous breakdown and was confined in a lunatic asylum. After his discharge he lived with his wife Rhoda in seclusion in rural Kent, occasionally sought out as a last surviving remnant of the much-mythologized but by then utterly vanished literary world of the ‘Nineties’.

Iseult Gonne was the daughter of the Irish nationalist, Maud Gonne. As an illegitimate daughter who lived in France, it was not until the divorce case between Maud Gonne and John MacBride took place in 1905-6 that her existence became known to the wider public. W. B. Yeats, Maud Gonne's lifelong admirer, knew of Iseult's existence from 1898 and became a close part of her life. Yeats proposed to Maud Gonne in July 1916 and then Iseult soon after. He was rejected by both. Maud and Iseult Gonne were both the subjects of a number of poems written by Yeats.

In 1913, Iseult met Rabindranath Tagore. Inspired by his poetry, she began to learn Bengali in 1914. She was tutored by Devabrata Mukerjea, with whom she also had an affair. Together, in France, they translated some of Tagore's The Gardener into French directly from the Bengali. Tagore left it to Yeats' discretion to decide the merit of the work, but Yeats did not feel sufficiently bilingual in French to judge them. The translations were never published. Iseult attracted a number of other men, including Ezra Pound. In 1920, she married Francis Stuart, a poet of Ulster descent. When Maud Gonne died in 1953, Iseult was not acknowledged as her mother's daughter in her will. Iseult died a year later.

Hari Singh Gour was a member of the Legislative Assembly for the Central Provinces in the 1920s. He was a prominent Barrister and reformer in favour of increasing the age of consent. In 1924 he proposed a bill that raised the age from 12 to 14; this was eventually raised to 13 in an amended bill in 1925. Gour also established a University in Saugar in Madhya Pradash in 1946, now known as Dr Harisingh Gour University.

Aged eighteen, Gour went to England to study at Cambridge University. He joined Downing College, Cambridge and in 1891 he took the degree of philosophy and economics. In 1892 he took the degree in law. In 1905 he was awarded a D.Litt. degree from London University and then from Trinity College. After getting the law degree in 1892, he returned to India.

When a student at Cambridge in 1890, Gour published an anthology of poems entitled Stepping Westward and Other Poems. He became a member of the Royal Society of Literature after his poems were published. In 1930 he published a novel in London entitled His Only Love. The hero of the novel, Himmat Singh, was a state scholar at King's College, Cambridge, who was called to the Bar and had published prize poems.

Born in 1888, Asaf Ali was educated at St Stephen's College, Delhi, and then went to London to study law in 1909. Asaf Ali was a frequent visitor to India House in Highgate, having been met by a resident at Charing Cross. He became close friends with Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (Chatto) and met Madame Cama in Paris. After a couple of weeks of lodging in India House, he then moved to lodgings in Finsbury Park and studied for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn. Just as Jawaharlal Nehru remembers that he did not visit India House during his time as a student, Asaf Ali recalls that he did not meet Nehru when he was studying for the Bar although they were in London at the same time. Asaf Ali was in London when Syed Ameer Ali founded the London Muslim League and attended the Universal Races Congress in London in 1911. He was called to the Bar in January 1912 and returned to India to practice.

In 1914, Asaf Ali returned to England on a Privy Council Brief. Upon his return he met up with old friends and began to frequent the National Liberal Club. He planned a publication of an Urdu literary magazine called Taj from London but the costs were beyond his means. He translated some of Rabindranath Tagore's poems into Urdu and was then introduced to Tagore at a reception at the Criterion organized by Indian residents in London. Having been friends with Chatto, he was introduced to Sarojini Naidu, his sister, and decided to organize a literary dinner for Naidu. He invited a whole host of famous British literary figures and invited W. B. Yeats to chair and propose the toasts. Ali and Naidu would often visit the Poetry Bookshop where Harold Monro organized readings.

In 1914, the British attack on the Ottoman Empire had a large effect on the Indian Muslim community. Asaf Ali supported the Turkey side and resigned from the Privy Council. He saw this as an act of non-cooperation and returned to India in December 1914. Upon his return to India, Asaf Ali became heavily involved in the nationalist movement. He was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1935 as a member of the Muslim Nationalist Party, but then became a prominent member of Congress and was chosen as deputy leader. He was imprisoned in Ahmadnagar in 1944. His wife, Aruna, whom he married in 1928 and was of Hindu background, was a prominent Congress nationalist and socialist.

In 1947, Asaf Ali was appointed Ambassador to the United States, was Governor of Orissa from 1948 to 1952 and was then India's Minister to Switzerland, Austria and the Vatican. He died in 1953 in Switzerland.

Samuel Fyzee Rahamin was born in Poona, now Pune, India. After training at the School of Art in India, he moved to London to enrol at the Royal Academy Schools where he was taught by John Singer Sargent and Solomon J. Solomon. He returned to India in 1908 abandoning the loose brushwork technique inherited from Sargent and became increasingly committed to reviving the traditional style of Moghul painting. On his marriage to Atiya Begum (of the Fyzee family) in 1912, Samuel Rahamin, a Jew by faith, converted to Islam and took the name Fyzee Rahamin. His wife was a respected authority on Indian music and her book The Music of India (1925) was widely appreciated. Atiya Fyzee wrote travel accounts of her time in Europe, had a friendship with Mohammad Iqbal, and her brother was a successful tennis player who appeared at Wimbledon. Music seems to have had an important influence on Samuel Fyzee Rahamin’s work who illustrated his wife’s book.

His career is further evidence of the global networks of art and culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. He lived in Bombay (now Mumbai), but held his first exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1914. He also exhibited in the UK and America, including the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. A 1926 issue of Burlington Magazine carried a notice of his exhibition of watercolours at Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery, entitled ‘Water-Colours, India, Vedic, Mythological and Contemporary’. In May 1939, he held a ‘Special Exhibition’ displaying ‘Modern Indian Art, on traditional lines’ at the American Association, New York. He was recruited to become an art advisor to the state of Baroda and also painted frescoes for the Imperial Secretariat, New Delhi, in 1926-7 and 1928-9.

In 1928, Samuel Fyzee Rahamin approached William Rothenstein to recommend him to paint the proposed murals in India House in Aldwych. Fyzee Rahamin was not appointed because of his seniority. Fyzee Rahamin assisted the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in the reorganization of collections of Asian art. He was also a writer and published plays and poetry. He lived in Karachi from 1947 and his art collection, which he presented to the Aiwan-e-Riffat Museum in Karachi, is now housed in the Fyzee Rahamin Art Gallery. There are also examples of his work in Tate Britain and Manchester City Art Gallery.

Manmohan Ghose was the son of Dhan Ghose and his wife, Swarnalata Basu. His younger brother was Sri Aurobindo (Aravinda) Ghose, the politician and spiritual leader.

Manmohan, a brilliant scholar, was educated at Manchester grammar school (1881–4), St Paul's School in London (1884–7) and won an open scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford which he took up in 1887.

Ghose became close friends with Laurence Binyon at St Paul's, bonding over their love for the Classics and Matthew Arnold. Binyon credited Ghose for introducing him to Indian literature, art and philosophy. Binyon joined Oxford a year after Ghose and they collaborated on the poetry publication, Primavera, published in 1890. In the vacations he and his brothers stayed at 128 Cromwell Road, London, the office of the South Kensington Liberal Club. The Liberal Club's secretary was J. S. Cotton, editor of the Academy, who was born in India and whose publication reviewed Primavera. Ghose later met Oscar Wilde at the Fitzroy Street settlement, who reviewed Primavera in the Pall Mall Gazette, with particular favour towards Ghose. During this time in London, Ghose met many other members of the 'Rhymers' Club' set such as Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson, who were both very fond of him. Dowson had wished for Ghose's work to be included in The Book of the Rhymers Club that was published in 1892, but Ghose was unable to contribute as he could not share the cost of the expenses.

In 1893, after his father’s death, Ghose returned to India in mourning and took a series of teaching posts in Patna, Bankipur, and Calcutta. In 1897 he was appointed Assistant Professor at Dacca College and full Professor in 1901. After the death of his wife, Malati Banerjee, in 1918, his health deteriorated and he aged prematurely. For thirty years Ghose had cherished the dream of returning to England. In 1924 he booked a passage for himself and his daughters for a date in March, but he died in Calcutta, on 4 January 1924 after a short illness, three weeks before his retirement from Presidency College.

Rabindranath Tagore was the son of Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi. The Tagores were one of the leading families of Calcutta, whose estates and assets were built up by Rabindranath's grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore (1794–1846) and consolidated by his father, Debendranath, who headed the Brahmo Samaj movement (a Hindu Reform movement) in Bengal. Rabindranath was the fourteenth child and eigth son of his parents. His elder brother, Satyendranath, was the first Indian to compete and pass the ICS competitive exams in London and was posted to the Indian Civil Service in Bombay. Tagore went to Britain in 1878 and attended lectures at University College, London, but returned to India before he could receive a degree. Tagore's resistance to rote learning inspired him to build a school, Patha Bhavana, at Santiniketan (in the Bengali countryside) in 1901 with only five students.

Tagore is best known as a Bengali literary figure - he experimented in all literary genres (except verse epic), composed about 2,500 songs (words and music), and painted, towards the end of his life, nearly 3,000 paintings. He wrote poems and stories mainly in his mother tongue, Bengali. The Tagore that the world beyond India came to know was catapulted into fame by the award of the Nobel prize for literature. In November of 1912, Gitanjali  (‘Song-offering’) was published in a limited edition of 750 copies by the India Society of London. William Rothenstein had brought Tagore's work to the attention of the India Society and William Butler Yeats provided the introduction. In 1913 it was printed again by Macmillan, and on 16 November 1913, news of the award reached him in Santiniketan.

Subsequently, he toured much of the world and became the world’s first intercontinental literary star. Macmillan published a number of translations of Tagore's poems and stories after this success. A number of Tagore's plays were performed in London by British and Indian troupes. Tagore's international tours were also an opportunity for Tagore to speak against war and nationalism, to promote pan-Asianism, to expound India's spiritual heritage, his aesthetic and educational philosophy, and his ‘poet's religion’. With his fame, Tagore amassed more wealth which he was able to invest into his school at Santiniketan and the University, Visva-Bharati. The school and university attracted money and foreign scholars and students from all over the world, from C. F. Andrews and E. J. Thompson to Indira Nehru (later Gandhi) and Sylvain Levi. In 1919, Tagore returned the knighthood he had received from the British Government in 1915 as a protest against the Amritsar Massacre.

He died on 7 August 1941 at 6 Dwarkanath Tagore Lane, Jorasanko, Calcutta, in the house where he was born.

Harindranath Chattopadhyaya was the son of Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya and younger brother of Sarojini Naidu and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya. Aghorenath had studied at Edinburgh University in the nineteenth century. Harindranath's parents were Bengalis who had settled in Hyderabad; Harindranath was born in the Deccan in 1898. Encouraged by his family, Harindranath began to write verse as a child and also enjoyed acting.

He married Kamaladevi, a Madrasi widow in 1919, having been introduced by a younger sister, Suhasini. Shortly after their marriage, Harindranath sailed to England, leaving behind his wife (who was later to join him). Harindranath had published poems and written plays in India before he arrived in London, and was helped to settle in Britain by friends of his famous elder sister, Sarojini. He initially lodged in Gower Street and sent his poems to Cambridge in order to gain admission as a research scholar. Harindranath successfully gained admission into Fitzwilliam Hall and took up research work on 'William Blake and the Sufis'. During his time as a student in Britain, Harindranath's poems were published in the Indian Magazine (Journal of the National Indian Association) and Britain and India (Journal of the Theosophical-influenced Britain and India Association). He corresponded with Laurence Binyon about publishing further anthologies of poems in London.

As the Civil Disobedience movement gained momentum in India, Harindranath and Kamaladevi decided to return to India and Harindranath abandoned his Cambridge degree. They returned via Europe to visit with his elder brother, the revolutionary Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (Chatto) and also met with Madame Cama.

In 1929, a publication entitled Five Plays was produced by Fowler Wright in London. The book printed praise inside its front cover from Rabindranath Tagore, Alice Meynell and George Russell (AE) (for Harindranath's poetry). The playlets (adapted from Hindu mythology) were introduced by S. Fowler Wright, who compared Harindranath Chattopadhyaya to Joseph Conrad. Harindranath's play, 'Tukaram' had been performed in the Little Theatre, London, in 1928. Harindranath maintained a successful career as poet, playwright and actor upon his return to India. He died in 1990.

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.