Attia Hosain
Represented by
Victoria Hobbs
© Vic Singh
Attia Hosain was born in Lucknow in 1913.
She was educated at La Martiniere and Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, blending an English liberal education with that of a traditional Muslim household where she was taught Persian, Urdu and Arabic.
She was the first woman to graduate among the feudal “Taluqdari” families into which she was born.
Influenced, in the 1930s, by the nationalist movement and the Progressive Writers’ Group in India, she became a journalist, broadcaster and writer of short stories.
In 1947 she went to England with her husband Ali Bahadur Habibullah and their two children, Waris and Shama. Presenting her own woman’s programme on the BBC Eastern service, among others, for many years, she also appeared on television and the West End stage.
In addition she lectured on the confluence of Indian and Western culture and wrote Phoenix Fled (1953), a collection of short stories, and Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), a novel.
Attia Hosain died in 1998.
She was educated at La Martiniere and Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, blending an English liberal education with that of a traditional Muslim household where she was taught Persian, Urdu and Arabic.
She was the first woman to graduate among the feudal “Taluqdari” families into which she was born.
Influenced, in the 1930s, by the nationalist movement and the Progressive Writers’ Group in India, she became a journalist, broadcaster and writer of short stories.
In 1947 she went to England with her husband Ali Bahadur Habibullah and their two children, Waris and Shama. Presenting her own woman’s programme on the BBC Eastern service, among others, for many years, she also appeared on television and the West End stage.
In addition she lectured on the confluence of Indian and Western culture and wrote Phoenix Fled (1953), a collection of short stories, and Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), a novel.
Attia Hosain died in 1998.
