'Paper lioness' : Margaret Noble / Rajagopal Chattopadhyaya

This biography of Margaret Noble strives to move beyond the well-known and well-circulated The Master as I Saw Him. Lizelle Reymond-Jean Herbert’s English translation from their French original (1945), The Dedicated : A Biography of Nivedita (1953) has been extensively used, but at the same time, its numerous fables and follies are pointed out. Pravarajika Muktiprana’s, Bhagini Nivedita, first published in 1959, remains the most comprehensive, rational and authentic biography of the subject. The one in English by late Pravrajika Atmaprana, Sister Nivedita (1961 and later edns.), though possessing some good features, falls short in those qualities and in literary merit; it has been sparingly used here. Late Sankariprasad Basu produced his four-volume Nivedita Lokmata in Bengali (1968-1994). In the present book, much material has been translated into English from Muktiprana and Sankariprasad’s Bengali books, leaving aside their pious panegyrics – these authors didn’t write English biographies. Nimaisadhan Basu also wrote a small Bengali book, Wimbledoner Margaret (2000), used at places. Use of other sourcebooks, e.g., Marie L. Burke’s New Discoveries (vols. 5 & 6), S. Basu-S. B. Ghosh’s Vivekananda in Indian Newspapers (1969), Letters of Sister Nivedita (1982) compiled by S. Basu and previous books written by the present author brings new illumination to the present work. Structurally, this book is very similar to the author’s ‘Kaguje Singhi’ : Margaret Noble (May, 2017) but is not a direct translation. Many portions have been omitted mainly for the sake of brevity and some new materials are added. The biography is extensively illustrated with photographs and paintings, adding 80 art paper pages to the text. Moving chronologically, each source was considered about each phase in her life, and where disagreements arose, a conclusion was reached. Letters of Sister Nivedita (1982) was extensively used to prepare this book. See FULL PREFACE as IMAGES here.