How does our understanding of literature change when we view it not as a disembodied discourse but as a series of material objects, physical technologies, and social innovations? In his recent book, Tyler Williams (University of Chicago), reframes the rise of Hindi in South Asia by looking at the physical books, bindings, illuminations, scripts, and performative rituals through which it gained predominance.

Revisiting several key debates in our discipline -- foremost among them, questions of vernacularization -- If All the World Were Paper grounds the conversation in the material methods of book history and codicology and opens new insights into the rise of modern literary genres. His work is pathbreaking not only for South Asian Studies but for the broader discipline of literary studies and will be of use to anyone interested in bringing materialist methods to the study of literary history.