Premchand was one of the greatest literary figures of modern Hindi
literature and wrote over 250 short stories, a dozen novels and two
plays. Premchand, whose literary career started as a freelancer in Urdu,
was the first Hindi author to introduce realism in his writings. He
pioneered the new art form of fiction with a social purpose. He wrote of
the life around him and made his readers aware of the problems of the
urban middle-class and the country's villages. He depicted various
realistic issues of the day such as communalism, corruption, debt,
poverty, colonialism etc. in his stories.