Draft:Rupert Snell

Rupert Snell (born 1951) is a British scholar of Hindi language and literature. He is best known as the author of Hindi language learning books for the Teach Yourself Languages Series.

Snell's academic career began at the SOAS University of London and continued at the University of Texas at Austin.

He was the 1997 recipient of the Dr. George Grierson Award for promoting the Hindi language abroad.

Education and Teaching Career
In his youth, Rupert Snell developed an interest in Indian music, having heard Ravi Shankar's music for the first time in 1967. This led him to enroll in 1970 at the SOAS University of London for a BA degree in Hindi. He traveled to India, then returned to SOAS to complete his BA, as well as a PhD in 1984 on pre-modern Braj Bhasha, with a dissertation on a sixteenth-century devotional text, the Hita Caurāsī of Hit Harivansh Goswami.

Snell taught at SOAS for three decades, and then moved to the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. During his tenure at UT Austin, he also served as the Director of the Hindi Urdu Flagship program for several years until his retirement in 2017.

Publications
Works by Snell include:

Teach Yourself guides

 * Complete Hindi (Teach Yourself, 2010; John Murray Press, 2017)
 * Essential Hindi Dictionary (McGraw-Hill, 2012)
 * Get Started in Hindi (Teach Yourself, 2014)
 * Read and Write Hindi Script (Mobius, 2010)
 * Speak Hindi with Confidence (McGraw-Hill, 2010)

Other
In addition to various books for learners of modern Hindi for which he is best known to the public, Snell has published articles in journals, and edited volumes on aspects of Hindi and its culture. His scholarly interest is on modern Hindi and its earlier literature in the Braj and Awadhi dialects, with a focus on aesthetics and the literary production of meaning.

Snell's main published contributions include:


 * 1990: (With Christopher Shackle) Hindi and Urdu since 1800: A Common Reader. London: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS); Delhi: Heritage.
 * 1991: The Hindi Classical Tradition: A Braj Bhāṣā Reader. Psychology Press.
 * 1991: The Eighty-Four Hymns of Hita Harivaṃśa: An edition of the Caurāsī Pada. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass; London: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
 * 1998: Harivansh Rai Bachchan, In the Afternoon of Time: An Autobiography. (Translation.) Penguin.
 * 1998: (Edited with Ian Raeside) Classics of Modern South Asian Literature.
 * 2011: (Edited with Rita Kothari) Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish. Penguin.
 * 2021: Poems from the Satsai. Translations from Biharilal’s 17th-century classic. Harvard University Press.
 * 2023: (with Neha Tiwari) Reading the Ramcaritmanas: A Companion to the Awadhi Ramayana of Tulsidas. Primus Books.