Tamil Nadu Timeline

CultureEast India Company rule

Higginbotham's bookshop founded in Madras

· Anna Salai

Higginbotham's bookshop founded in Madras
Ravichandar84, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Abel Joshua Higginbotham founded Higginbotham's on Mount Road, regarded as India's oldest bookshop still in existence.

Higginbotham's was founded in Madras in 1844 by Abel Joshua Higginbotham, an English librarian. He had worked as a librarian at the Wesleyan Book Shop run by Protestant missionaries, and bought the loss-making business. Its first bookstore on Mount Road is regarded as the oldest bookshop still in existence in India. The firm later also sold stationery and published and printed books, including copies of the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 in English and Tamil.

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