NON-EXPORTABLE

a)
TITLE: A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields
AUTHOR: Toru Dutt
PUBLISHER: Printed by B. M. Bose, at the Saptahik Sambad Press
PLACE: Bhowanipore
YEAR: 1876
EDITION: First
BINDING: Special presentation bindingin half-leather with ribbed compartments on spine with gilt title and gilt florettes. Original marbled endpapers
NO.OF PAGES: pp. v, 233 including notes + 1 leaf of musical notations at the end
SIZE:
Height: 21.5 cm
Width: 14.5 cm
Depth: 2 cm
Signed ink inscription by Toru Dutt in French on front flyleaf: "A Monsieur Garcin de Tassy, Hommage, Toru Dutt/ Ce 29 Juillet 1877, 12 Manicktollah Street, Calcutta".

b)
TITLE: Life and Letters of Toru Dutt
AUTHOR: Harihar Das
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 1921
EDITION: First
BINDING: Original blue cloth with gilt title on spine
NO.OF PAGES: pp. xvi, 364 + photogravure portrait of Toru Dutt and 12 other plates. p. 350 of the book refers to Garcin de Tassy's association with Toru Dutt
SIZE:
Height: 22.8 cm
Width: 15.5 cm
Depth: 3 cm
Previous owner's name on title-page

Toru Dutt was the first Indian woman to write poetry and fiction in English and French. This book consists of her translations from the French poetry. Garcin de Tassy [1794-1878] was a French Orientalist and scholar. In February 1877 Toru Dutt learnt from a friend in Paris that on reading her poems "M. Garcin de Tassy was so struck with your wonderfulcourage in writing, that he took your address in order to send you one of his books at once." [Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, p. 350].

When her collection of Sanskrit translations of Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan was published posthumously in 1882 eminent English critic Edmund Gosse wrote an introductory memoir for it. In this he wrote of Toru Dutt: "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."

Toru Dutt died of tuberculosis at the age of 21 on 30 August 1877, a month after she had sent this book off to Tassy.

She died so early and so young that no book inscribed by her has ever appeared at any auction.