Strange Familiarities: Tracing Epistolary Cultures in the Subcontinent, 1857-1915

Strange Familiarities traces epistolary traditions produced within the ethnolinguistic cultures of nineteenth-century Bengal and the North-West Provinces in colonial India. The book provides a close reading of texts and English translations of epistolary literature, selected due to their novelty and radical responses to the 'postal revolution' of the time.

Through the study of epistolarities, the book also directs the reader's attention towards cultural histories, especially the conceptual complexity of the 'subcontinent'. Trained as we are to see 'the subcontinent' through a post-Partition nationalist lens, and as a composite of distinct, bordered entities, this renders us less inclined to consider subcontinental cultures in terms of their interconnected histories. The book, thus, not only serves as a reader of nineteenth and early twentieth-century epistolary texts, it also acts as an archive and provides a glimpse into aspects of cultural history.