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An Indian student won acclaim in Wales as a bard and became the first woman to get a law degree from University College London. And although racial prejudice brought a heartbreaking end to a three-year relationship she never went home, writes Andrew Whitehead.
Dorothy Bonarjee was Indian by birth, English by upbringing, French by marriage - and Welsh at heart.
To put it another way, she was the perpetual outsider, sometimes by chance, and at other times by choice. Even the moment of her greatest achievement in 1914 - winning one of Wales s most prestigious cultural prizes while still a teenager - is notable above all because she was so obviously not Welsh.
Poet Mohini Gupta reads from Dorothy Bonarjee s Eisteddfod-winning poem
Poet Mohini Gupta reads from Dorothy Bonarjee s Eisteddfod-winning poem
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Indian student Dorothy Bonarjeee won the University College of Wales Eisteddfod in 1914 with a poem on the subject of the Welsh soldier, Owain Lawgoch.
The poem had to be written according to a prescribed metre and length. Dorothy Bonarjee wrote in English rather than Welsh, which was permissible in 1914.
Here, the Indian poet Mohini Gupta reads the 10th stanza of the winning poem, and the final lines:
He told him of the lonely rock-strewn shore,
The dark, brown sea-weed lying on the sand.