Poet, translator, essayist and educationist, Manilal Dvivedi (1858-98) is best known for his scholarship and passionate zeal for social reform. His reflective prose was a dynamic force in the cultural renaissance of Gujarat. His life was an unusual mixture of virtue and weakness, success and failure, pleasure and pain, hardly matched by any of his contemporaries.
Biographer, scholar and critic, Dhirubhai Thaker (b. 1918) presents in this monograph a moving account of the life and work of Manilal Dvivedi, mainly to the non- Gujarati readers.
My interest in the life and writings of Manilal Nabhubhai Dvivedi dates back to 1941, when, after being transferred from Elphinstone College, Bombay to the Gujarat College, Ahmedabad as a lecturer, I registered myself with the University of Bombay for a Ph.D. thesis on this eminent man of letters. When I took up the project, many of his writings were not casily accessible. Sudarshan Gadyavali, the omnibus collection of Manilal's essays, which was published in the second decade of this century through the good offices of Manilal's friend, the late Dr. Anandshanker Dhruva, was also not traceable except in a few libraries.
After completing the thesis, which has been published in two volumes, I edited a collection of his selected essays, a complete collection of his poems, his plays and his much discussed autobiography. However, as will be seen in Appendix I, several other works of Manilal still remain unpublished.
In this monograph, I have tried to narrate and evaluate Manilal's literary activities keeping in view the non-Gujarati readers. These activities embraced such diverse fields as philosophy, social reform, education and politics, and became a protective cultural force against the powerfully flowing current of Western influence in the second half of the nineteenth century. His writings in English stimulated discussions in international learned societies, generating interest in Indian culture and philosophy.
When quoting from Manilal's Gujarati writings, I have rendered the extracts into English. I am thankful to my friend and former colleague at Gujarat College, Prof. C.N. Patel, for going through the manuscript and making valuable suggestions in regard to the language. My grateful thanks are due to the Sahitya Akademi for entrusting me with this work.
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