Banerjee, Samik

Samik Bandyopadhyay (Bengali: শমীক বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়; born 1940) is a Kolkata-based critic of Indian art, theatre and film. His father Sunit Kumar Banerjee did his PhD on Elizabethan lyrics under Sir H. J. C. Grierson, the discoverer of the metaphysical poets, at University of Edinburgh in the 1930s, and subsequently became a professor of English literature. Bandyopadhyay entered the prestigious Presidency College, Calcutta in 1955, graduated from the University of Calcutta in 1961, and subsequently earned a Master of Arts degree in English literature. He started working as a lecturer Rabindra Bharati University in 1966. In 1973, he joined the Oxford University Press as an editor and worked there till 1982. He resigned and never sought an employment because no job was lucrative enough for buying the books he wanted to read. He took up tutoring English literature for his profession, which enriched his reading as well as brushed his critical edge. He continued book editing, however, with Seagull Books, till 1988, and then with Thema Publishing. Bandyopadhyay joined the Communist Party of India after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Later on, he also witnessed incorporation of Gramscian thought in Indian Marxism. In 1993, his edited book Antonio Gramsci Nirbachita Rachansamagra was published in Calcutta.