When the first edition of this scholarly work, based on a course of lectures by Professor K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar In the University of Leeds, appeared in 1962, it was hailed by reviewers as an authoritative and critical history of over 150 years of Indian writing in English.

The present edition, now greatly enlarged, besides bringing the survey up-to-date, critically reviews also prose writer like Radhakrishnan and Nirad Chaudhuri, poets like Kamala Das and Mokashi-Punekar, and novelists like Prawer  Jhabvala and Anita Desai, Arun Joshi and ved Mehta.