Everyday Reading

Utilizing a wealth of previously unexamined print culture materials, as well as paying careful attention to the production of commercial publishing companies and the reception of ordinary reading practices, this book offers fresh perspectives into book history, South Asian literary studies, and South Asian gender studies.

“ Everyday Reading is deeply archival, and Mandhwani skillfully negotiates both what the archive presents and what it does not, painstakingly accounting for both the general inclinations and desires of the readers even as she seeks to explain some of the contradictions that are part and parcel of any middle class. This project expands what terms like ‘literariness,’ ‘modernism,’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ meant in the 1950s and 1960s.”—Sangeeta Ray, author of En-Gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives

“Mandhwani has researched a largely overlooked archive of Hindi middlebrow magazines, popular books, and mail-order book series from the 1950s and 1960s to make a compelling argument about readerly practices.”—Ulka Anjaria, author of Reading India Now: Contemporary Formations in Literature and Popular Culture