ABSTRACT
This last chapter demonstrates how the project of publishing Collected Works was largely successful in signalling a reappraisal of Bharat Chandra by Bengali critics, scholars and editors at the end of the 19th and the turn of the 20th century. This exercise involved drawing attention to the significance and worth of the poet’s literary work that detracted notice from Bidyasundar. There was a revaluation of Bidyasundar as well, when critics commented on the prevailing mood and essence of the composition. It operated within a contested field, but the fortunes of the text came to be salvaged as new critical readings attempted to retrieve the larger context and circumstances of its creation. There were also discussions on authenticity and the crucial connections between hand copied manuscripts and printed books. The discussion of Battala, the region in which popular printing presses clustered, brings the larger account of popular print in 19th-century Bengal to a close.
