Samar Sen was born on 10 October 1916, in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India. He was a prominent Indian Bengali poet and journalist in the post-Independence era. He was born into a well-known Vaidya family. He was a graduate of the Scottish Church College, at the University of Calcutta. He gave up poetry fairly early, however, and devoted the better part of his later life to Marxist politics and journalism. He was the editor of the leftist newspaper Frontier, published from Kolkata, which was banned during the period of the Indian Emergency (1975 -1977) declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.