Educated at Calcutta and Oxford Universities.

Posts held:
Professor of English at Presidency College, Kolkata, 1973 to 1991
Professor of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 1991 till retirement in June 2010
Emeritus Professor, Jadavpur University, Kolkata thereafter
Chair of the Board of Trustees, The Telegraph Education Foubndation

Chief fields of academic specialization:
(a) European Renaissance Literature: 2 books, 9 editions and critical anthologies published and 2 under preparation
(b) Textual studies: subject of latest book, The Metaphysics of Text (CUP, 2010).
Founder and Director, till his retirement, of the School of Cultural Texts and Records, a centre for archiving and textual studies at Jadavpur University.

Translation:
Has translated widely from Bengali to English. Inter alia, General Editor of the Oxford Tagore Translations series.

Social interests and commitments:
Interested in urban life and urban studies, especially as relating to his native city Kolkata. Editor of the two-volume encyclopedic compendium Calcutta: The Living City (OUP, 1990). Has also written a Bengali citizen’s guide to practical civic issues and problems, Nagar o Nagarik (The City and Its Citizens).

Writes extensively in English and Bengali, and sometimes campaigns, on urban, educational and social issues. Wrote a fortnightly column, ‘View from Calcutta’, in The Asian Age for twelve years. Many recent articles on the new lines of development in India, especially as relating to the educational system.