Writer and collector of Bengali folk tales Reverend Lal Behari Day (or Dey) was born on this day at Sonapalasi near Bardhaman.
He came to Kolkata with his father and was admitted to Reverend Alexander Duff’s General Assembly Institution. He formally embraced Christianity in 1843. In 1842, he had published The Falsity of the Hindu Religion.
He was a missionary and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He taught English and other subjects in several colleges, including at Hooghly Mohsin College of the University of Calcutta. He wrote Bengal Peasant Life (1874), which was a critique of the feudal system.
He wrote two novels, Chandramukhi, A Tale of Bengali Life, and Govinda Samanta, again about the predicament of peasants in the feudal system.
Day is most remembered as the first collector of Bengali fairy tales, which he compiled as Folk-Tales of Bengal. He advocated the use of Bengali language and its use as a medium of education.