‘Gitanjali’ was translated in English by ‘Rabindranath Tagore’ and Introduction of the first edition was written by W.B. Yeats (William Butler Yeats). The book was translated in English into the year 1912.
Originally Gitanjali is a collection of 156/157 poems in the Bengali language. The translation in English was firstly had the translation of 103 poems and was published by the India Society of London. English translation contains the translation of 53 poems from the original Bengali Gitanjali and 50 other poems from his drama ‘Achalayatan’ and eight other books of poetry. It includes 17 Poems from Gitimalya, 15 Poems from Naivedya and 11 Poems from Kheya.
The collection of 103 poems and contains the original manuscript for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 and became the first non-European to receive the honor. The English version of Gitanjali became popular in the west and was widely translated. It’s Tagore’s best-known collection in the West.
The poem is based on the theme of ‘devotion to god’. The English version of the poem was published under the publishing house ‘Macmillan and Company’. The book is a part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.