From newspaper sketch to 'novel': The writing and reception of 'Fasana-e Azad' in North India, 1878--1880

In this dissertation I examine the writing and reception of Fasana-e Azad, the first bestselling Urdu "novel" by Ratan Nath Dar 'Sarshar.' Originally composed between 1878 and around 1883, Fasana-e Azad pioneered the serialized format in Urdu. Its publication in installments within the daily Urdu newspaper Avadh Akhbar significantly promoted the novel genre and helped build a reading public for the daily newspaper (itself still a new technology at the time). Yet Fasana-e Azad's publication history has received little scholarly attention, despite offering a unique window on the rise of the novel genre in north India.;I address this gap in this dissertation, which focuses on the period of Fasana-e Azad's newspaper publication in Avadh Akhbar between 1878 and 1880. I analyze Fasana-e Azad 's writing and reception in light of contemporary developments in commercial publishing, periodical and satirical fiction, and the growth of a reading public for Urdu newspapers and the "novel." By comparing the original serialized version with the first and second book editions, I uncover how Fasana-e Azad was transformed from a collection of satirical newspaper sketches focused on social change into a more 'respectable' and middle-class "novel." These findings point to the extended and interactive process by which Sarshar and his readers interpreted and fashioned the "novel" in late-nineteenth-century north India. By considering Fasana-e Azad's reception in readers' letters, I show how Sarshar went to some lengths to align his text with the developing naturalist aesthetics popular among his readers. I also consider attacks by Avadh Panch, the satirical literary journal modeled on the famous Punch of London, to examine how Fasana-e Azad became implicated in ongoing disputes about "people of the language" (ahl-e zaban) and proper language use. Finally, I reexamine Fasana-e Azad's technique and "message," to explore how Sarshar intervened in the debates of the day on respectability, social status, and "humanity." I highlight how Sarshar used contrasting character pairs to satirize the emerging middle classes and maintain narrative and ideological complexity while revising Fasana-e Azad from a set of newspaper sketches to the four-volume "novel" we know today.