"This book is a search for 'the real Anandibai Joshee' -- a search in which the readers are invited to participate." In her short and eventful life, Anandibai Joshee, the first Indian woman to earn a medical degree, broke many stereotypes. Literate at a time when it was taboo for a girl to attend school or even 'pick up a paper', she was courageous, articulate, and assertive. And ambitious. Fuelled by a desire to improve the healthcare that was available to Indian women at that time, she travelled across the seas to the United States to study medicine. Meera Kosambi's biography of Anandibai is more than just a retelling of the life of a woman who was ahead of her times. Drawing on a host of narratives, Kosambi recovers Anandibai's many voices, which have been submerged in history - that of a conflicted feminist, a nationalist, and a reformer, among others - and her engagement with the world at large. This volume is a testament to Meera Kosambi's commitment to social history. When she passed away in 2015, she left an incomplete manuscript that has painstakingly been put together by the editors. Drawing on archival research, including a host of Anandibai's letters, her poems in Marathi, newspaper reports, and rare photographs, this book will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, sociology, gender, and South Asian studies.

"This book is a search for 'the real Anandibai Joshee' -- a search in which the readers are invited to participate." In her short and eventful life, Anandibai Joshee, the first Indian woman to earn a medical degree, broke many stereotypes. Literate at a time when it was taboo for a girl to attend school or even 'pick up a paper', she was courageous, articulate, and assertive. And ambitious. Fuelled by a desire to improve the healthcare that was available to Indian women at that time, she travelled across the seas to the United States to study medicine. Meera Kosambi's biography of Anandibai is more than just a retelling of the life of a woman who was ahead of her times. Drawing on a host of narratives, Kosambi recovers Anandibai's many voices, which have been submerged in history - that of a conflicted feminist, a nationalist, and a reformer, among others - and her engagement with the world at large. This volume is a testament to Meera Kosambi's commitment to social history. When she passed away in 2015, she left an incomplete manuscript that has painstakingly been put together by the editors. Drawing on archival research, including a host of Anandibai's letters, her poems in Marathi, newspaper reports, and rare photographs, this book will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, sociology, gender, and South Asian studies.

The first Indian headmaster of an English-medium school in Surat, and later Diwan of Bhuj, Nandshankar Mehta (1835-1905) was a strong advocate of social reform. Karan Ghelo, the first modern Gujarati novel and his only work of fiction, draws heavily on bardic chronicles and historic texts. // Tulsi Vatsal, a graduate of Oxford University, is an independent researcher, writer and editor. She has authored a number of books on Indian history and culture. Her latest book is Sahib, Bibi, Nawab: Baluchar Silks of Bengal 1750-1900. // Aban Mukherji is the author of Soonamai Desai of Navsari: A Biographical and Autobiographical Sketch. She is currently co-editing a nineteenth-century Gujarati text, Mumbaino Bahaar.