Sisir Kumar Das (1936–2003) was a poet, playwright, translator, comparatist and a prolific scholar of Indian literature. He is considered by many as the "doyen of Indian literary historiographers". Almost singlehandedly Das built an integrated history of Indian literatures composed in many languages, a task that had seemed to many important scholars of Indian literatures to be “a historian’s despair”. His three volume (among proposed ten volumes) A History of Indian Literature (Western Impact: Indian Response 1800–1910; Struggle for Freedom: Triumph and Tragedy 1911–1956; From Courtly to Popular 500–1399) is credited for having devised hitherto absent methods necessary for situating diverse Indian literary cultures in history. Apart from this, another monumental work in Das’ scholarly oeuvre is the multi-volume English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, edited by him.