The rise of commercial printing in nineteenth-century North India is described in Print and Pleasure. How did the development of printing technology and the foresight of Indian publishers make the book a commonplace item and an essential component of leisure in a population that was primarily illiterate? What literary subgenres gained popularity? Who and how did they read them? The idea that Hindi and Urdu are in struggle with one another and the rise of linguistic nationalism have shaped our image of North Indian culture at this time. According to Print and Pleasure, there were a number of additional factors at play that disseminated very distinct and far more hybrid tastes in the name of commercial interests. The importance of this major new book lies in showing, moreover, that book history can greatly enrich our understanding of literary and cultural history. Francesca Orsini mines a huge and largely untapped archive in order to reveal that popular songbooks, theatre transcripts, meanderingly seralized narratives, flimsily published tales, and forgotten poems are as much a part of colonial history as the elite novels and highbrow journals that are more frequently the subject of historical studies.