We are pleased to announce that the catalogue for the Popular Market Bengali Books is now available to view via the British Library's Search Our Catalouge: Archives and Manuscripts pages.

2971 examples of Bengali street literature have been digitised by staff at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Digital copies and (some of) the original material can be consulted at the School of Cultural Texts and Records or the reading rooms here at The British Library. The books cover subjects including folk literature, music and songs, theatre booklets, homeopathy, astrology, adventure novels, horror stories, grammar guides, religious practices and belief, and many many other topics. Anyone reading this blog will be familiar with some of the material, and seen some of the images produced by the Project.

The material is organised into 11 separate Collections, based on the name of the Collector of the original material. This includes the School of Cultural Texts itself whose Collection contains seven sub-collections, reflecting the development of their holdings. The 11 Collections are:

EAP127/1 SCTR Collections

EAP127/2 R.P. Gupta Collection

EAP127/3 Devajit Bandyopadhyay Collection

EAP127/4 Sukanta Chaudhuri Collection

EAP127/5 Samantak Das Collection

EAP127/6 Arun Ghosh Collection

EAP127/7 Satyabati Giri Collection

EAP127/8 Gautam Mitra Collection

EAP127/9 Rudrajit Mookherjee Collection

EAP127/10 Prabir Sen Collection

EAP127/11 Sukumar Sen Collection

Alex