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Battalar Boibajar O Tar Samajik Itihaas

This is not a translation of any published work in English submitted in an earlier RAE.

The article focuses on the social history of literary taste and publishing, specifically entering Bengali literary debates about acceptability and obscenity, by focusing on Battala as the centre of vernacular commercial publishing in nineteenth-century Bengal. It also opens up new questions in literary history about power and contestation, as also of audience. By arguing for (a) a case of social engineering of tastes by the middle classes and (b) the limits of refinement and standardisation in Bengali print, the article challenges established understandings of the ‘great and good’ amongst scholars of the language and the wider Bengali reading public today.