Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861 in Calcutta, in the then Bengal Presidency of British India. He is credited with modernising Bengali literature, freeing it from the classical mould and experimenting with new styles. His collection of poems Gitanjali is his most famous work. He translated some of these poems into English when he visited London, and these were instrumental in getting him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
