Everyday Texts in the British Empire

A presentation and discussion of Priyasha Mukhopadhyay’s new book, Required Reading: The Life of Everyday Texts in the British Empire (Princeton University Press). The book offers a new and provocative history of reading that focusses on archives of everyday writing from the British empire. Mukhopadhyay rummages in the drawers of bureaucratic offices and the cupboards of publishers in search of how historical readers in colonial South Asia responded to texts ranging from licenses to manuals, how they made sense of them, and what this can tell us about their experiences living in the shadow of a vast imperial power. The author’s presentation will be followed by a discussion with Alex Bubb.

The introduction of the book is freely available online