Major Authors, Poets, and Their Works
Core concepts
Build a mental map linking author, era, genre, and signature works. Essential figures include Chandidas and Vidyapati in the medieval lyric; Bharatchandra and Ramprasad in the eighteenth century; Madhusudan, Bankimchandra, Rabindranath, and Nazrul in the modern canon; and Jibanananda, Budhadev Basu, and Sufia Kamal in the twentieth century. Know Meghnad Badh Kavya, Kapalkundala, Durgeshnandini, Gitanjali, Bidrohi, Rupasi Bangla, and Banalata Sen.
Common traps
Questions test first lines, dedication, and genre. Bidrohi is a poem, not a collection; Gitanjali in English is a translation, not the same set of poems as the Bengali Gitanjali. Do not attribute Shesher Kabita to a poet other than Rabindranath, and remember Jibanananda's Rupasi Bangla was published posthumously.
Rule of thumb
For each major author, memorise three things: one epoch-making work, one genre they transformed, and one first line or famous phrase.
Worked example
Asked who wrote Banalata Sen, recall Jibanananda Das, the poem's opening about a thousand years of travel, and its place in Banalata Sen (1942). The trap is confusing it with Rupasi Bangla, also Jibanananda's, but a sonnet sequence on rural Bengal published later.