Novel
The Spoilt Child
আলালের ঘরের দুলাল
Peary Chand Mitra · 1857
Synopsis
Baburam Babu, of Baidyabati, an old Brahmin, made his fortune by extorting litigants at the court where he was employed, then retired as a landowner and merchant. His eldest son, Matilal, spoilt since childhood, demands the moon from his father and refuses to go to school: it is the household clerk who has to teach him. Having become an ignorant and dissipated young man, he drinks and gambles, while Thakchacha and a gallery of notables and lawyers' agents of Calcutta meddle in the family's affairs.
Context
The story first appeared in instalments in the Masik Patrika, a small monthly founded in 1854 with the mathematician Radhanath Sikdar for the education of women, then in book form, in 1857 according to most sources, in 1858 according to others. The author signed himself Tekchand Thakur. In it he used for the first time in a printed book the spoken language of Calcutta, and this simple prose came to be called the alali style. The second edition, in 1870, was illustrated by Girindra Kumar Dutta; a stage version was performed at the Bengal Theatre in January 1875, and G. D. Oswell gave an English translation in 1893.
Who it is for
A short, satirical novel, which assumes you know what the babu was, the enriched, English-educated Calcutta man at whom its barbs are aimed. No French translation.
Prizes and reception
Hailed by the Calcutta Review as the first novel written in Bengali, a rank disputed by a few earlier narratives; it opened the way for Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.
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