Lal Behari Dey

Lal Behari Dey was born on 18 December 1824 to a Bengali Suvarna Banik caste family at Sonapalasi near Bardhaman. After primary education in the village school he came to Calcutta. he embraced Christianity on 2 July 1843. In 1842. From 1855 to 1867 Lal Behari was a missionary and minister of the Free Church of Scotland.
Lalbehari Dey was perhaps the first collector of Bengali fairy tales and compiled Folk-Tales of Bengal (1875). This scholarly work is a path-breaking effort in cataloguing the cultural heritage of rural Bengal. This compilation not only preserved folk tales that might otherwise have been lost, but also paved the way for the modern study of Folk literature.
Ironically, in 1842, a year before his baptism, he had published a tract, The Falsity of the Hindu Religion, which had won a prize for the best essay from a local Christian society.