# Bibliography of Swami Vivekananda
This bibliography lists the published works of [Swami Vivekananda](https://www.edgepedia.org/swami-vivekananda) (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), the Hindu monk who introduced Vedanta to the West, together with the principal biographies and scholarly studies about him.[1](https://belurmath.org/swami-vivekananda/) His own writings were mostly lectures, letters, and conversations collected after his death; only a small group of books appeared in his lifetime, and the standard English collection, the *Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda*, grew to nine volumes.[2](https://www.vivekananda.net/BooksBySwami.html) • [3](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20303)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Author's dates | Born 12 January 1863 in Kolkata; died 4 July 1902[1](https://belurmath.org/swami-vivekananda/) |
| Books published in his lifetime | Karma Yoga (1896), Raja Yoga (1896), Vedanta Philosophy: An Address before the Graduate Philosophical Society (1896), Lectures from Colombo to Almora (1897), Vedanta Philosophy: Lectures on Jnana Yoga (1902)[2](https://www.vivekananda.net/BooksBySwami.html) |
| Standard English collection | *Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda*, nine volumes, 1,503 articles[3](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20303) • [4](https://englishbooks.rkmm.org/k) |
| Bengali collection | *Vani o Rachana*, ten volumes; the English and Bengali corpora together total about 15 million characters[3](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20303) |
| First Complete Works edition | Almora: Advaita Ashrama, 1907, 7 volumes in 8[5](https://www.vivekananda.net/ListOfBooks/English/Teachings.html) • [13](https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA29350449?l=en) |
| Classic biographies | Swami Nikhilananda, *Vivekananda: A Biography* (1953); Romain Rolland, *The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel*[6](https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/hinduism-biographies/vivekananda) |
| Recent scholarship | Swami Medhananda, *Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism* (Oxford University Press, 2022)[7](https://academic.oup.com/book/38781) |
## Books published during his lifetime
Five books appeared while Vivekananda was alive, according to the Vivekananda Library Online catalog: *Karma Yoga* (published February 1896, New York), *Raja Yoga* (1896, with an 1899 edition), *Vedanta Philosophy: An Address before the Graduate Philosophical Society* (first published 1896), *Lectures from Colombo to Almora* (1897), and *Vedanta Philosophy: Lectures on Jnana Yoga* (1902).[2](https://www.vivekananda.net/BooksBySwami.html) A separate listing gives *Bhakti-yoga* as published in Madras in 1896 and *Raja Yoga* as published from London in July 1896.[5](https://www.vivekananda.net/ListOfBooks/English/Teachings.html) The yoga books gather lectures he gave in America and England after his appearance at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in September 1893.[1](https://belurmath.org/swami-vivekananda/)
## Posthumous publications
Most of what Vivekananda wrote was published after his death. The posthumous list includes *Addresses on Bhakti Yoga*, *Bhakti Yoga*, *The East and the West*, *Inspired Talks* (first published 1909), *Para Bhakti or Supreme Devotion*, *Practical Vedanta*, *Jnana Yoga*, a 1920 edition of *Raja Yoga*, his translation of the *Narada Bhakti Sutras*, and a comprehensive collection of his speeches and writings.[2](https://www.vivekananda.net/BooksBySwami.html) *Inspired Talks* records a series of class talks delivered during his seven weeks' stay at Thousand Island Park, U.S.A., taken down by his American disciple Miss S.E. Waldo.[5](https://www.vivekananda.net/ListOfBooks/English/Teachings.html) Later editions of his letters appeared as *Letters of Swami Vivekananda* (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1985) and *Epistles of Swami Vivekananda: First Series* (4th ed., Almora: Advaita Ashrama, 1925).[8](https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/icp03/chapter/swami-vivekananda/) • [5](https://www.vivekananda.net/ListOfBooks/English/Teachings.html) Translations into Indian languages include *Vivekavani* (Telugu, 1986) and *Yoga* (Telugu, 1987).[2](https://www.vivekananda.net/BooksBySwami.html)
## The Complete Works
The *Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda* is the standard English collection. The first edition was published by Advaita Ashrama, Almora, in 1907; the later set, published 1926–1936, began with 7 volumes in 8 and later reached nine volumes containing 1,503 articles.[5](https://www.vivekananda.net/ListOfBooks/English/Teachings.html) • [4](https://englishbooks.rkmm.org/k) • [13](https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA29350449?l=en) The contents are organized by genre and occasion:[9](https://swami-vivekananda.com/works-of-swami-vivekananda/)
- **Volume 1**: Addresses at The Parliament of Religions (including "Paper on Hinduism" and "Religion not the Crying Need of India"), Karma-Yoga, Raja-Yoga, and lectures and discourses.[9](https://swami-vivekananda.com/works-of-swami-vivekananda/) • [10](https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/master_index.htm)
- **Volume 2**: "Work and its Secret," "The Powers of the Mind," Jnana Yoga, Practical Vedanta and other lectures, and reports in American newspapers.
- **Volume 3**: Bhakti-Yoga, Para-Bhakti or Supreme Devotion, Lectures from Colombo to Almora, and Buddhistic India.
- **Volume 4**: Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga, writings in prose and poems, and translations in prose and poems.
- **Volume 5**: Epistles (First Series), interviews, notes from lectures, questions and answers, conversations and dialogues, and sayings and utterances.
- **Volume 6**: Lectures and discourses, notes of class talks, writings, and Epistles (Second Series).
The Karma-Yoga chapters in Volume 1 include "Karma in its Effect on Character," "The Secret of Work," "What is Duty?," and "The Ideal of Karma-Yoga"; the Raja-Yoga section runs from "The First Steps" through "Prana," "Dhyana and Samadhi," and "Raja-Yoga in brief."[10](https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/master_index.htm) A companion Bengali collection, *Vani o Rachana*, fills ten volumes; the English and Bengali corpora are related but not parallel, and together contain about 15 million characters of text.[3](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20303)
## Biographies and studies
The official biography of the [Ramakrishna](https://www.edgepedia.org/ramakrishna) movement is *The Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples*, which has reached four editions and is undergoing another revision.[11](https://iarf.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Vivekananda-Archetypal-Hero-or-Doubting-Saint.pdf) Older biographical studies by disciples and admirers include Swami Nikhilananda's *Vivekananda: A Biography* (New York, 1953) and [Romain Rolland](https://www.edgepedia.org/romain-rolland)'s *The Life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel*.[6](https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/hinduism-biographies/vivekananda) Sister Nivedita, one of his Western disciples, wrote *The Master as I Saw Him* (Calcutta: Udbodhan Press, 1910).[8](https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/icp03/chapter/swami-vivekananda/) Other titles in an [Indian philosophy](https://www.edgepedia.org/indian-philosophy) course bibliography include Swami Lokeswarananda's *The Perennial Vivekananda: A Selection* (Sahitya Academy, 1988) and Swami Shuddhidananda's edited *Vivekananda: As the Turning Point* (Advaita Ashrama, 2013).[8](https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/icp03/chapter/swami-vivekananda/)
Recent scholarship has reinterpreted his philosophy. Swami Medhananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and Senior Research Fellow in [Philosophy](https://www.edgepedia.org/philosophy) at the Ramakrishna Institute of Moral and Spiritual Education in Mysore, published *Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism* with [Oxford University Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/oxford-university-press) (online 17 February 2022), rejecting the two prevailing readings of Vivekananda as either a modern exponent of Shankara's Advaita or a "Neo-Vedāntin" shaped mainly by Western ideas.[7](https://academic.oup.com/book/38781) A 2017 MDPI article examined how the "Neo-Vedānta" label, drawn from earlier Indological scholarship, has framed depictions of him in scholarly literature.[12](https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/6/101)
## What has changed since 2023
The textual base for studying Vivekananda has become a research object itself. In 2025 a project called Viveka-Insight released a bilingual, open-source resource over the nine-volume English *Complete Works* and the ten-volume Bengali *Vani o Rachana*, building a cross-lingual concept graph with citation-grounded retrieval over the roughly 15 million characters of both corpora.[3](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20303) The Ramakrishna Order's own digital catalogs now list the *Complete Works* as 1,503 articles downloadable as a single 19.5 MB collection, alongside anthologies of studies and interpretations of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.[4](https://englishbooks.rkmm.org/k)
## References
1. [Swami Vivekananda, Belur Math – Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission](https://belurmath.org/swami-vivekananda/)
2. [Books by Swami Vivekananda, Vivekananda Library Online (Frank Parlato Jr.)](https://www.vivekananda.net/BooksBySwami.html)
3. [Viveka-Insight: a cross-lingual concept graph and citation-grounded retrieval resource over the complete works of Swami Vivekananda in English and Bengali, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20303)
4. [Essential Books of Ramakrishna Order](https://englishbooks.rkmm.org/k)
5. [List of books on Swami Vivekananda and associates, Vivekananda Library Online](https://www.vivekananda.net/ListOfBooks/English/Teachings.html)
6. [Vivekananda, Encyclopedia.com bibliography](https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/hinduism-biographies/vivekananda)
7. [Swami Medhananda, Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism, Oxford Academic](https://academic.oup.com/book/38781)
8. [Swami Vivekananda – Indian religion and philosophy, e-PG Pathshala (INFLIBNET)](https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/icp03/chapter/swami-vivekananda/)
9. [Works of Swami Vivekananda, swami-vivekananda.com](https://swami-vivekananda.com/works-of-swami-vivekananda/)
10. [Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda – Master Index, ramakrishnavivekananda.info](https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/master_index.htm)
11. [Vivekananda: Archetypal Hero or Doubting Saint?, IARF](https://iarf.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Vivekananda-Archetypal-Hero-or-Doubting-Saint.pdf)
12. [Rethinking Neo-Vedānta: Swami Vivekananda and the Selective Historiography of Advaita Vedānta, Religions 8(6):101, MDPI](https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/6/101)
13. [CiNii Books - The complete works of Swami Vivekananda](https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA29350449?l=en)
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