Sri Aurobindo

Early Cultural Writings

(1890 — 1910)

Publisher’s Note

Early Cultural Writings consists of essays and other prose writings on literature, education, art and other cultural subjects. Most of them were written between 1890 and 1910, a few between 1910 and 1920. The editors have arranged the material by topic in nine parts and two appendixes. Many of the pieces were published in journals or books during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime. The others are reproduced from his manuscripts. The editors have checked all the texts against the relevant printed or manuscript versions. Simple editorial problems arising from incomplete revision, etc., are indicated by means of the system explained in the Guide to Editorial Notation on the next page. More complex problems are discussed in footnotes or in the Note on the Texts at the end of the volume.

Guide to Editorial Notation

About half the material in this volume was not prepared by Sri Aurobindo for publication. This material has been transcribed from manuscripts that present a variety of textual difficulties. As far as possible the editors have indicated these problems by means of the notation shown below.

Notation Textual Problem

[word] Word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to the manuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors

[    ] Blank left by the author to be filled in later but left unfilled, which the editors were not able to fill

[note] Situations requiring textual explication; all such information is printed in italics