Moving away from scholarly accounts that associate the rise of the novel solely with nationalism, The Novel in Nineteenth-Century Bengal is a fascinating account of the history of modern Bengali and of Bengali print culture, shifting focus from individual writers to the multiple worlds of readers. Deeply researched using archival as well as literary sources, this book offers a deep dive into the practices, ideals, and misconceptions surrounding reading, identity, and class in the 19th century. - Ulka Anjaria, Professor of English, Brandeis University, USA

This timely and innovative book charts the trajectory of the Bengali novel in colonial India by focusing on reading not as a universal experience, but as an everyday practice. The Novel in Nineteenth-Century Bengal constitutes a vital addition to the study of South Asian writing by exploring systematically the fascinating question of how Bengalis thought about reading. It challenges the canonical role occupied by literature as a form of national affiliation, and advocates for a much-needed investigation of the practices of reading as material embodiments of religious, aesthetic, and linguistic intersections. - Maria Ridda, Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature, University of Kent, UK

How did the multilingual literary landscape of nineteenth-century Bengal shape the Bengali novel? Bhattacharya tells the story of the Bengali novel not through the English language experiments of its most famous practitioners like Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Mir Mosharraf Hossain. Instead, her book explores the reading strategies of the earliest readers, who drew on their familiarity with Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, and Arabic traditions to read Chattopadhyay and Hossain's Bengali novels. A fascinating account of how readers are made and how unfamiliar literary genres are read. - Akshya Saxena, Assistant Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, USA

Examines a history of reading practices in 19th-century Bengal at the intersection of Sanskrit and Perso-Arabic aesthetics, British colonial pedagogy, and the rise of Bengali novels.