[1][2][3][4][5] Madhusudan was born in Sagardari, a village in Keshabpur Upazila, Jessore District of Bengal (present-day Bangladesh), to a Hindu family.

[8] After he finished his education in Sagardari at roughly the age of fifteen, Rajnarayan sent Madhusudhan to Calcutta to attend Hindu College with the eventual aim of becoming a barrister.

The university stipulated that all students had to dress in Western clothing, eat European cuisine using cutlery, learn British songs and speak only English with the aim of creating an anglicized middle class of Indians who would serve as officials in the colonial administration.

Dutt began writing English poetry aged around 17 years, sending his works to publications in England, including Blackwood's Magazine and Bentley's Miscellany.

[10] This was also the time when he began a correspondence with his friend, Gour Das Bysack, which today forms the bulk of sources on his life.

[10] He describes the day as: Long sunk in superstition's night, By Sin and Satan driven, I saw not, cared not for the light That leads the blind to Heaven.

In The Anglo-Saxon and the Hindu (1854), an essay in florid, even purple prose, are references to and quotations from almost the whole of Macaulay's shelf of European books.

[10][13] The period during which he worked as a head clerk and later as the Chief Interpreter in the court marked his transition to writing in his native Bengali, following the advice of Bethune and Bysack.

He wrote 5 plays: Sermista (1859), Padmavati (1859), Ekei Ki Boley Sabyata (1860), Krishna Kumari (1860) and Buro Shaliker Ghare Ron (1860).

When Dutt later stayed in Versailles, the sixth centenary of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri was being celebrated all over Europe.

Victor Emmanuel II, then monarch, liked the poem and wrote to Dutt, saying, "It will be a ring which will connect the Orient with the Occident.

Kaliprasanna Singha organised a felicitation ceremony for Madhusudan to mark the introduction of blank verse in Bengali poetry.

"[19] He added: "Ordinarily, reading of poetry causes a soporific effect, but the intoxicating vigour of Madhusudan's poems makes even a sick man sit up on his bed.

"[19] In his The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Nirad C. Chaudhuri has remarked that during his childhood days in Kishoreganj, a common standard for testing guests' erudition in the Bengali language during family gatherings was to require them to recite the poetry of Dutt, without an accent.

He wrote to his friend Bysack from France: If there be any one among us anxious to leave a name behind him, and not pass away into oblivion like a brute, let him devote himself to his mother-tongue.

[10] In 1858, he was joined there by a 22-year old of French extraction,[8] Emelia Henrietta Sophie White, the daughter of his colleague at the Madras Male Orphan Asylum.

[13] They had two sons, Frederick Michael Milton (23 July 1861 – 11 June 1875)[8][16][26] and Albert Napoleon (1869 – 22 August 1909),[8][26] and a daughter, Henrietta Elizabeth Sermista[8] (1859 – 15 February 1879).

[13] Three days before his death, he recited a passage from Shakespeare's Macbeth to his dear friend Bysack, to express his deepest conviction of life: ...out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

As a child takes repose on his mother's elysian lap, Even so here in the Long Home, On the bosom of the earth, Enjoys the sweet eternal sleep Poet Madhusudan of the Duttas.

[29] Michael Madhusudhan is a 1950 Indian Bengali-language drama film by Modhu Bose which starred Utpal Dutt in the titular role.

[31] In honour of Dutt, every year on his birthday, a fair is held in his home at Sagardari, which is organized by the District Council of Jessore.