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Home| Acknowledgements |
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I am grateful to India Foundation for the Arts for funding the work as part of its ‘Arts Research and Documentation’ programme. IFA’s mission of providing “support for the Arts” is a unique endeavour, it encourages engagements with areas that are generally deficient in funding opportunities. Through grantee meets, archiving workshops and seminars IFA also ensured that the project was equipped with the necessary exposure and expert advice from a very early stage. My thanks to the entire IFA team for their ready cooperation and enthusiastic support at every level – working with them on this project has been a pleasure. I sincerely thank Ms. Priti Paul for her warm interest in the project and for the generous support she extended to IFA for underwriting the grant. I am grateful to the following institutions/libraries and their office-bearers for allowing me to access their holdings for the documentation work: Bagbajar Reading Library Bangiya Jatiya Shiksha Parishad (National Council of Education, Bengal) Bangla Academy, Dhaka Bengali Periodicals & Newspapers Archive, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Bidhan Chandra Granthagar Boys’ Own Library Chaitanya Library Dhaka Public Library Dhaka University Library India Office Collections, British Library National Archives of Bangladesh, Dhaka National Library, Kolkata, Government of India Rabindra Bhavan, Visvabharati Sahitya Parishat Granthagar Shishu Academy, Dhaka Uttarpara Jaykrishna Public Library Eleena Banik had kindly permitted me to photograph a family heirloom - a rare edition of a Yogindranath Sarkar book; I warmly thank her for sharing the treasure with us. Resources apart, this work owes a lot to the cheerful assistance and significant contributions of friends, colleagues and teachers. I am deeply indebted to Prof. Moinak Biswas, whose advice I had continually sought and who was always unfailingly helpful. I am particularly grateful to Shanu Lahiri – the eminent artist, Prof. Goutam Bhadra, Prof. Swapan Chakravorty and Dr. Abhijit Gupta for their valuable suggestions and judicious comments, for pointing out mistakes and for drawing my attention to overlooked texts. My sincere thanks to Amit and Paramita, their warm hospitality and support had made my research trip to London a comfortable recess instead of a plain work assignment. To Ashimda, who had provided me with helpful clues and suggested interesting avenues of research, I owe a special word of thanks. Thanks are also due to Chaitidi, Anindya, Manas and Sanmita for their sound advice and resourceful ideas. I am grateful to Chandrima for assisting me with the final corrections and formatting work. Slipping back to the past for a moment, I acknowledge with gratitude the astute guidance of my teachers - Prof Krishna Sen, Prof Jharna Sanyal and Prof Nilanjana Gupta - who had encouraged my research interests in children’s literature at a time when the subject was not credited with much academic value and was far from being part of the university curriculum. Finally, the website looks the way it does because of Upal, Anumeeta and Paramita. My warm thanks to them not only for their technical contribution to this database but also for their commitment to the project. |
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