Toru Dutt — Chambers's Encyclopaedia

Toru Dutt, a young Christian Hindu girl of extraordinarily precocious genius, was born in Calcutta, March 4, 1856, studied French and English literature with avidity, spent the years 1869-73 in England and France, and at eighteen published a critical essay of strange maturity on Leconte de Lisle, with translations into English verse. She next gave herself to Sanskrit, and translated several portions of the Vishnupurana into English blank verse. In 1876 she published A Sheaf gleaned in French Fields (2d ed. Lond., with Memoir by her father, 1880), being English translations of about two hundred French poems. Next year she died, August 30, 1877. A romance which she had written in French, Le Journal de Madlle. d'Arvers, was published at Paris in 1879, with a study by Madlle. Clarisse Bader. Finally her Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan was published at London in 1882, with a Memoir by E. W. Gosse.