History of English publication in India

The first printing press to be established in India was in 1706 in Tranquebar by the Protestant missionary Bartholomew Ziegenbalg. But printing activity was not done on an organized scale till the establishment of the Serampore Mission Press in 1800 by the British Baptist Mission. The first printing activity was that of translations of the Bible into different Indian languages. In fact, the first book to be published by the Serampore press was the New Testament in Bengali. In 1804 the first printed prose work in Bengali, History of King Pritapadityu written by Ram Basu was published by the Press. Very soon the press published the Bible in most other Indian languages besides Armenian and Burmese. This was gradually followed by other Indian presses that began publication in Indian languages.

However the monopoly of English language printing was with the British. The British presses of Macmillan started functioning in 1903, Longman in 1906 and Oxford University Press in 1912. The best known Indian presses were Rajpal and Sons, M. N. Roy's Renaissance Publications and Gandhiji's Navjivan Press. Popular Prakashan was started in 1928. English books were printed and distributed only by the British companies till 1947. In the 1950s the Sahitya Akademi and the National Book Trust were set up to bring reading to the masses, with the printing of books at affordable prices. The private presses set up in the 60s were Asia Publishing House, and P. Lal's Writer's Workshop. Vikas publishing house was also functional around this time. However, the publication of English books by these publishing houses was still meager, and translations were much less. But the scene changed with the eighties. There was a spurt in the number of publishing houses which published Indian writing in English and also quality translations. Permanent Black, Ravi Dayal, IndiaInk, Kali for Women, Rupa, Katha etc are prominent names.