Yesterdate: This day from Kolkata’s past, July 3, 1932

Swarnakumari Devi, one of the first writers of the novel in Bengali, passed away on this day. She was 76. She was a daughter of Debendranath Tagore and an elder sister of Rabindranath Tagore. She was educated at home and married at 13 to Janakinath Ghoshal, a spirited man who was disinherited because of marrying into the Tagore family, which belonged to a lower denomination of the Brahmins. Swarnakumari, who was influenced by the deeply stimulating cultural and artistic environment of the Tagore household, wrote the novel Dipnirvan. She wrote numerous songs and edited the Tagore family magazine Bharati, to which the young Rabindranath contributed his writings.She ran Sakhi Samiti, an organisation to help destitute women and widows. Writer and activist Sarala Devi Chaudhurani was her daughter.