Shobhanasundari Mukhopadhyay (born Shovona Devi Tagore in 1877 in Calcutta; died 26 May 1937, in Howrah[1]) was an Indian writer, known for her collections of folktales.

[2][5][3] Her prefatory note to the book describes her inspiration and process:The idea of writing these tales occurred to me while reading a volume of short stories by my uncle, Sir Rabindranath Tagore; but as I have none of his inventive genius, I set about collecting folk-tales and putting them into an English garb; and the tales contained in the following pages were told to me by various illiterate village folks, and not a few by a blind man still in my service, with a retentive memory, and a great capacity for telling a story.

[7][8][9] The book brought Bengali folktales to the attention of English-speaking folklorists around the world, who used it as a source in their comparative work, including new forms of computer-aided study.

[2][15] Others describe its similarity to other Victorian short story collections produced in India and elsewhere, filled with subtle ideas about social reform,[16] or as demonstrative of the complex sociopolitical circumstances of translating folktales into the colonizer's language.

In Indian Fables and Folk-lore (1919) and The Tales of the Gods of India (1920), she includes information on her source material for the stories, something she had not previously done.