Although the filmmaker Satyajit Ray is well-known across the world, few outside Bengal know much about the diverse contributions of his forebears to printing technology, nationalism, children?s literature, feminism, advertising, entrepreneurial culture and religious reform. Even within Bengal, the earlier Rays are often regarded exclusively as children?s writers. The first study in English of the multifarious interests and accomplishments of the Ray family and its collateral branches, The Rays Before Satyajit interweaves the Ray saga with the larger history of Indian modernity and its contradictions.