ABSTRACT
This chapter tracks the course of Bidyasundar’s future after its appearance in print. This came to be determined by different reading and alien sensibilities of the British reviewers. It started with James Long, the Irish missionary whose career (as a reader, cataloguer and reviewer of Bengali books) this chapter traces. He began collecting and cataloguing books and at the same time labelling them. Separated from the larger text, Bidyasundar came to be defined by the amorous nature of its tale and disparaged as pandering to lowly taste. The response of the Bengalis to this kind of stigmatising was somewhat ambivalent. They could not easily disparage the text without having to denigrate their own literary traditions that the British so often branded as crude and unrefined. But they expressed disquiet at the text and with the visibility of print that made sections of lovemaking impossible to ignore. They were also dismayed by the huge popularity of the tale of Bidyasundar. This chapter is also a history of book reviews undertaken by the local Bengalis in journals.
