Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter, and playwright. His lyrical poetry and novels gained him worldwide acclaim, and he was the first Asian to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, primarily for his work Gitanjali. He wrote over one thousand poems; eight volumes of short stories; almost two dozen plays; eight novels; and many books and essays on philosophy, religion, education, and social topics. His other great love was music, and he composed more than two thousand songs, both the music and lyrics.