Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay was born as the eldest child of Mahananda and Mrinalini on 12th September 1894 in West Bengal. His family originally belonged to Panitar village in the North 24 Parganas district. His great-grandfather migrated to Barakpur village and got settled there as an Ayurvedic physician. However, Bibhutibhushan was born in Muratipurin, North 24 Parganas district. His father, Mahananda Bandopadhyay, was a Sanskrit scholar and story-teller by profession.
As a child, Bibhutibhushan was a talented student, who studied at Bongaon High School. He completed his undergraduate degreewith Economics, History and Sanskrit from the Ripon College, Kolkata. Though he was admitted to M.A. and Law classes, he could not afford the fees. Therefore, he was forced to take a job of a teacher in a school at Jangipara, Hooghli to support his family. Bibhutibhushan’s early days were spent in abject poverty.
His first wife, Gouri Devi died of pneumonia only after a year of their marriage. This tragic event in the life of young Bibhutibhushan had a very serious effect on his emotional as well as literary life. It made him lead a life of loneliness and the theme of tragedy became a recurrent motif in his early writings. Bibhutibhushan married Rama Chattopadhyay and had a son, Taradas. Such a writer breathed his last on 1stNovember1950.
Bibhutibhushan‘s writing career started in 1921 with the publication of his first short story, Upekshita. With the arrival of his masterpiece novel, Pather Panchali, he became well-known with readers and critics. Pather Panchali was followed by its sequel, Aparajito. Both of these novels have been translated into numerous Indian and foreign languages and were also adapted for films by Satyajit Ray. In all Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay wrote 16 novels and over two hundred short stories.