Many of the posts on Clay Lane are by well known writers such as William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Others are by less well known authors who have something no less important to say.
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Panruti Vallam Ramaswami Raju (?-1897) was born in Madras, the son of a Government Inspector of Salt, and educated at Presidency College, graduating from Madras University in 1871. After serving as an Inspector of Sea Customs and as Principal of Pachaiyappa’s High School in Kanchipuram, Ramaswami Raju joined the Inner Temple in London in 1882 (aged about thirty) and was called to the bar in 1885, but struggled financially, which drove him to write for a living. He had already written two plays, Lord Likely (1875) and Urjoon Sing (1876), and translated Shakespeare into Tamil for the Madras Vernacular Literature Society; now he published two collections of folktales, Tales of the Sixty Mandarins (1886) and Indian Fables (1887), teaching Indian languages meanwhile at the Universities of Oxford and London. At some unknown date, he returned to Madras to practise as a barrister, earning a formidable reputation and considerable wealth. His final work, a lengthy Sanskrit and English poem Rajangala Mahodyanam: or, the Great Park of Rajangala, was unfinished at his death in 1897.
