staged in 1853. It was a musical comedy with a thin plot line and was modelled after the European opera. 20th century Prose Age of Premchand Premchand emerged on the literary scene in the early 1890s and soon became probably the most significant writer and novelist in the history of Urdu literature. He also wrote in Hindi. He wrote on the themes of religious and social reforms in Isare-e-Muabid and Hum Khurma-O Hum Swab, on the predicament of a prostitute in Bazaar-e-Husn, the problems of the farmers in Gosha-e Aafiat, and the problems of the middle class and women in Nirmala. Premchand was also the first writer to introduce European-style short stories in Urdu. His first collection of short stories, Soz-e- Watan, published in 1907, was banned by the British government. Other major writers during this period include Sudarshan, Mohammad Mehdi Taskeen, Qazi Abdul Gaffar, Majnun Gorakhpuri, Niaz Fatehpuri, Krishan Prasad Kaul, and L.M. Ahmed. Progressive Writers’ Movement In the 1930s, the short story became the leading prose genre in Urdu due to the influx of western influences especially the English, French, and Russian. The publication of Angarey, a short story collection by Sajjad Zaheer, Rashid Jahan, Mahmud-uz-Zafar, and Ahmed Ali in 1932 marked the beginning of the Progressive Writers' Movement that went on to substantially influence the content of Urdu literature for the next two decades. Ismat Chughtai was an important progressive novelist and short story writer who wrote extensively on femininity. Her major works include the collection of short stories Kaliyan and Chotein. She is best remembered for her short story Lihaaf published in 1942. Krishan Chander realistically portrayed life in his novel and stories such as Ek Gadhe ki Sargushisht, Shikast, Zindagi ke Mor Par, Hum Waishi Hain, Anna Datta, Kalu Bhangi, and Paude. Another leading writer of this period was Saadat Hasan Manto who wrote elaborately drawn stories like Khol do, Toba Tek Singh, Mozelle, and Thanda Gosht.} Special contributors Amir Khusro exercised great influence on the initial growth of not only Urdu literature, but the language itself (which only truly took shape as distinguished from both Persian and proto-Hindi around the 14th century). He is credited with the systematization of northern Indian classical music, including Hindustani music, and he wrote works both in Persian and Hindavi. While the couplets that come down from him are representative of a latter-Prakrit Hindi bereft of Arabo-Persian vocabulary, his