Hari Narayan Apte

In the Maharashtra region of Khandesh, in the village of Parola, Apte was born in 1864. Soon after, his family relocated to Bombay (now Mumbai) to spend a few years there before moving to Poona in 1878. (now Pune). At the age of 15, his family got him married off the following year by the societal norms of the time. (When he was 27, his wife passed away. The next year, he wed again.) Apte lived in Pune for the remainder of his life till his passing in 1919. The British Raj governed India during Apte's lifetime. Maharashtra has outstanding social and political leaders who are highly educated. With a strong sense of nationalism, Vishnu Shastri Chipalunkar, VasudevShastri Khare, Vaman Shivram Apte, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar founded the New English School in Pune in 1880. Apte attended that school from 1880 to 1883. Apte enrolled in Deccan College in 1883.

When Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar founded Fergusson College in 1885, Apte enrolled there immediately. He excelled academically in every subject but maths. After failing mathematics exams for three years, he regrettably ended his formal study in 1886 without a college degree. In his high school and college years, Apte devoured Marathi, Sanskrit, and English literature, the latter of which included plays by Shakespeare and Molière, books by Walter Scott and George W. M. Reynolds, and poetry by John Keats and Percy Shelley. Additionally, he read the writings of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Thomas Macaulay, Francis Bacon, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill. He set a high standard for future Marathi fiction authors by crafting potent novels and short tales that accurately depict various facets of modern life.

Novelists before him have produced fantastical works with topics unrelated to everyday social situations, including Gulabakawali. When Apte was a senior in high school, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar released Wikar Wilasita, a Marathi translation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Apte critiqued the translation in a 72-page essay published in the prestigious literary journal Nibandh Chandrika of the time. Apte received a warm commendation from Agarkar for his academic analysis. In his debut novel, Madhali Sthiti, published in Marathi, Apte wrote while still in college and drew inspiration from the social scene in Maharashtra at the time. (The book retells George W.M. Reynolds' Mysteries of London.) The first historical book written by Apte was Mhaisuracha Wagh. (It was based on the English book about Tipu Sultan by Meadows Taylor.) Apte wrote ten historical books and eight novels about modern society.

His social stories are known for their full use of straightforward, ordinary language and compelling descriptions of what might otherwise be "mundane" social situations. At the age of 26, Apte launched the weekly Karamanuk in 1890. In the first edition of the weekly, the first chapter of his novel in serial form, Pan Lakshyat Kon Ghetto, was published. For 27 years, he served as the weekly editor, introducing a large amount of literature to Marathi readers, including books, short tales, poetry, insightful essays, biographical sketches, translations, and adaptations. In a previous piece, Apte stated that the primary goal of his writings was to entertain Marathi readers while promoting social reform in Maharashtra.

When the orthodox culture of his day forbade women from going to school, he fervently advocated for it. He once claimed that not a single character in his social novels is one that he had not personally observed in society. India experienced a plague epidemic between 1897 and 1907, and Apte voluntarily offered his services to help Maharashtra's suffering citizens. His contributions were recognized with a Kaiser-i-Hind medal by the British government in power. While he was serving as mayor of the Pune municipality in 1918, Maharashtra experienced an influenza outbreak. Apte once more provided devoted service to the citizens of the city.