Book history is an emerging discipline in India. The editors of the present volume began the work of consolidating the dispersed writings in the field with Print Areas: Book History in India (Permanent Black, 2004). Reviewers welcomed that volume as the first significant Indian contribution to an academic discourse that is fast changing literary scholarship and challenging assumptions, if not practices, in the social sciences.

Moveable Type brings together a wider variety of the best recent work on the subject, combining compilation of primary data with rigorous historical analysis. Contributions range from a magisterial history of censorship in colonial India to reflections on the social construction of texts. Several essays focus on the study of historically symptomatic cases, such as the making of a Tamil encyclopaedia and the special number of a Hindi periodical.This collection is the latest in a series that promises to be an indispensable resource for future research in history, literature, textual scholarship, editorial theory, and cultural studies.