: हरि नारायण आपटे) (March 8, 1864 – March 3, 1919) was a Marathi

Marathi people

The Marathi people or Maharashtrians are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, that inhabit the Maharashtra region and state of western India. Their language Marathi is part of the southern group of Indo-Aryan languages...

  writer from Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

Through his writings, he provided an eminent example to future Marathi fiction writers in respect of writing effective novels and short stories which faithfully reflect different aspects of contemporary society. Before him, novelists wrote novels like Gulabakawali (गुलबकावली), Manjughosha (मंजुघोषा), and Muktamala (मुक्तामाला) with fantastic themes unrelated to realistic social situations.

Apte presided over Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan is a conference for literary discussions by Marathi writers. Though the conference has sometimes been held in a town outside the Indian state of Maharashtra, it is typically held annually in one of the towns in Maharashtra where Marathi is the mother tongue...

 in Akola in 1912.

Early life

Apte was born in 1864 in the town of Parole in Khandesh

Khandesh

Khandesh is a region of central India, which forms the northwestern portion of Maharashtra state.Khandesh was the terminal territorial part under the rule of Mughals. The Start of Deccan region demarcated by the boundary of Khandesh....

 region of Maharashtra. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Mumbai

Mumbai

Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

 to stay there for a few years and then in 1878 to Pune

Pune

Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...

. According to the social custom of his times, his family married him off the next year at his age 15. (His wife died when he was 27. He remarried the next year.) Until his death in 1919, Apte spent the rest of his life in Pune.

British Raj

British Raj

British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

 ruled over India in the lifetime of Apte. Highly learned and first-rate social and political leaders in Maharashtra VishnuShastri Chipalunkar, VasudevShastri Khare, Vaman Shivram Apte, Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Lokmanya Tilak –, was an Indian nationalist, teacher, social reformer and independence fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. The British colonial authorities derogatorily called the great leader "Father of the Indian unrest"...

, and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar was a social reformer from Maharashtra, India during the British Raj.-Early life:Gopal Ganesh Agarkar was born on 14 July 1856 in Tembhu , a village in Satara district now in Sangli district of Maharashtra. Agarkar had his primary education from Karad...

 started in 1880 New English School in Pune with nationalistic fervor. During 1880–1883, Apte attended that school.

In 1883, Apte joined Deccan College

Deccan College

Deccan College may refer to:* Deccan College Post-Graduate & Research Institute * Deccan College of Engineering and Technology * Deccan College of Medical Sciences, a medical college in Hyderabad, India....

. When, in 1885, Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Lokmanya Tilak –, was an Indian nationalist, teacher, social reformer and independence fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. The British colonial authorities derogatorily called the great leader "Father of the Indian unrest"...

 and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar

Gopal Ganesh Agarkar was a social reformer from Maharashtra, India during the British Raj.-Early life:Gopal Ganesh Agarkar was born on 14 July 1856 in Tembhu , a village in Satara district now in Sangli district of Maharashtra. Agarkar had his primary education from Karad...

 newly started Fergusson College

Fergusson College

Fergusson College is a degree college in western India, situated in the city of Pune. It was founded in 1885 by the Deccan Education Society and at that time was the first privately governed college in India. It is named after Sir James Fergusson, the Governor of Bombay, who donated a then...

, Apte immediately shifted to that college. He was a brilliant student in all subjects except mathematics. Being unable to pass mathematics tests for three consecutive years, he disappointingly terminated his formal education in 1886 without receiving a college degree.

Apte voraciously read Marathi

Marathi literature

Marathi literature is the body of literature of Marathi, a Sanskrit-derived language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra and written in the Devanagari script.-Early Marathi Literature :...

, Sanskrit

Sanskrit literature

Literature in Sanskrit begins with the Vedas, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India; the golden age of Classical Sanskrit literature dates to late Antiquity . Literary production saw a late bloom in the 11th century before declining after 1100 AD...

, and English literature

English literature

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

 in his high school and college days, the last including plays of Shakespeare and Molière

Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

, novels of Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

 and George W. M. Reynolds

George W. M. Reynolds

George William MacArthur Reynolds was a British author and journalist.He was born in Sandwich, Kent, the son of Captain Sir George Reynolds, a flag officer in the Royal Navy. Reynolds was educated first at Dr. Nance's school in Ashford, Kent, and then passed on to the Royal Military College,...

, and poetry of John Keats

John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

 and Percy Shelley. He also read the works of John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...

, Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....

, Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....

, Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

, Thomas Macaulay and Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

.

Writings

While Apte was in high school, in 1882, his teacher Gopal Ganesh Agarkar published a translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

  into Marathi, naming it Wikar Wilasita (विकारविलसित). Apte wrote a 72-page critique of the translation, the critique receiving publication in the reputed literary magazine of those times Nibandh Chandrika (निबंध-चंद्रिका). Agarkar heartily congratulated Apte for his scholarly critique.

While in college, Apte wrote to high acclaim of Marathi readership his first novel Madhali Sthiti (मधली स्थिति) with reference to the then social life in Maharashtra. (The novel was an adaptation of George W.M. Reynold's Mysteries of London.)

Mhaisuracha Wagh (म्हैसूरचा वाघ) was Apte's first historical novel. (It was based on Meadows Taylor's English novel about Tipu Sultan

Tipu Sultan

Tipu Sultan , also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He was the son of Hyder Ali, at that time an officer in the Mysorean army, and his second wife, Fatima or Fakhr-un-Nissa...

.)

Apte wrote eight novels concerning contemporary society and ten historic novels. Powerful use of unadorned, everyday language and captivating description of apparently “mundane” social events formed the hallmark of his social novels.

Karamanuk

In 1890, at his age 26, Apte founded weekly Karamanuk (करमणूक). The first chapter of his serialized novel Pan Lakshyat Kon Gh

Social service

In an early article, Apte announced promotion of social reform in Maharashtra besides Marathi readers' entertainment as the important objective of his writings. He passionately promoted women's education when, in his days, the orthodox society discouraged it. He had once said that there is not a “single character in my social novels which I have not witnessed in the society.”

During 1897–1907, there was a plague epidemic

Epidemic

In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...

 in India, and Apte selflessly volunteered for the welfare of suffering public in Maharashtra. The ruling British government honored his services with a Kaiser-i-Hind medal. In 1918, while he was working as a mayor of Pune municipality, there was an influenza

Influenza

Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...

epidemic in Maharashtra. Once again, Apte served the city's public with dedication.

Social novels

• Madhali Sthiti (मधली स्थिति) (1885)
• Ganapatrao (गणपतराव) (1886)
• Pan Lakshyat Kon Gheto? (पण लक्षात कोण घेतो?) (1890)
• Mee (मी) (1895)
• Jag He Ase Aahe (1899)
• Yashawantrao Khare (यशवंतराव खरे)
• Ajach (आजच)
• Bhayankar Diwya (भयंकर दिव्य)

Historic novels

• Mhaisuracha Wagh (म्हैसूरचा वाघ) (1890)
• Ushahkal (उषःकाल) (1896)
• Gad Ala Pan Simha Gela (गड आला पण सिंह गेला)
• Sooryoday (सूर्योदय)
• Sooryagrahan (सूर्यग्रहण)
• Kewal Swarajyasathi” (केवळ स्वराज्यासाठी)
• Madhyahna (मध्याह्न)
• Chandragupta (चंद्रगुप्त)
• Wajraghat (वज्राघात)
• ”Kalkut (कालकूट)