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Primary sourceBook1916

The Post Office

Rabindranath Tagore · 1916

Tagore's English-language play about a dying boy longing to see the outside world, published in 1916.

Tagore wrote this play himself, showing his work as a dramatist writing directly in English.

Full text (Internet Archive)

About this source

What it is

This is an early English-language edition of The Post Office, a play written by Rabindranath Tagore and published by Macmillan in 1916. The scanned copy comes from a library collection and shows the original title pages and cast list.

Why it matters

The play reflects Tagore's move into writing directly in English for an international audience, after earlier success with translated Bengali poetry. It reveals his interest in simple, symbolic stories about longing, confinement and the wider world, themes that resonated with readers worldwide during his lifetime.

Look closer

  • Why might Tagore have chosen to write this play in English rather than Bengali?
  • What might the title and the list of characters suggest about the story's themes?
  • How does a printed book like this one preserve a writer's words differently from a performance?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Rabindranath Tagore on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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