The Golden Threshold

Published in London in 1905 with an introduction by Arthur Symons, *The Golden Threshold* is Sarojini Naidu's first book of verse — thirty-seven poems organised into three sections: Folk Songs, Songs for Music, and Poems. Symons's preface places her among the Decadent and Symbolist circles she moved through in London in the 1890s, but the verses themselves are unmistakably Indian — palanquin-bearers, coromandel fishers, weavers, snake-charmers, lullabies, and lyrics in praise of henna and dawn. Naidu later became the first Indian woman to preside over the Indian National Congress (1925) and one of the chief lieutenants of Gandhi's satyagraha movement; the work collected here is the poetry that first made her famous in both England and India.