Higginbothams
Higginbothams is a bookstore chain and publisher based in the city of Chennai.
An English librarian named Abel Joshua Higginbotham established Higginbothams after reportedly arriving in India as a British stowaway. The captain of the ship he was on ejected him from the ship at Madras port, after he was discovered on board. In the 1840s, he found employment as a librarian with a bookstore named Weslyan Book Shop run by Protestant missionaries. However, the store suffered heavy losses and the missionaries who ran the business decided to sell their shop for a low price. Higginbotham purchased the business, set up his own store and called it "Higginbothams" in 1844.
The company's first bookstore at Mount Road is India's oldest bookshop in existence.
It soon gained a reputation for quality. John Murray, in his Guidebook to the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay in 1859, describes Higginbotham's as the "premier bookshop of Madras".
In March 1859, in a letter to Lord Macaulay, Lord Trevelyan, the Governor of Madras wrote:
“Among the many elusive and indescribable charms of life in Madras City, is the existence of my favourite book shop 'Higginbothams' on Mount Road. In this bookshop I can see beautiful editions of the works of Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Horace, Petrarch, Tasso, Camoyens, Calderon and Racine. I can get the latest editions of Victor Hugo, the great French novelist. Amongst the German writers, I can have Schiller and Goethe. Altogether a delightful place for the casual browser and a serious book lover.”
Higginbothams started selling stationery and also publishing and printing their own books from the 1860s onwards.
When the British Crown took over the governance of India from the British East India Company, Higginbothams printed copies of the Proclamation in English and Tamil and distributed them all over the Presidency.
Higginbotham's were appointed as the "official booksellers to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales" during the latter's visit to India in 1875.
Its first publication ‘Sweet Dishes: A little Treatise on Confectionary' by Wyvern, came out in 1884.
Higginbothams became official book-supplier to government and to various institutions, with different customers from British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to the last Maharaja of Mysore, Jayachamaraja Wodeyar.
Abel Joshua Higginbotham served as the Sheriff of Madras in 1888 and 1889. From 1890 to 1920, Higginbothams were the sole suppliers to the Connemara Public Library.
Since 1944, Higginbothams bookstalls were established in many railway stations on the South Indian Railway and the Southern Mahratta Railway. In 1904, the company's diamond jubilee year, the bookstore shifted to its current location on Mount Road. The new bookstore was specifically built for the firm, and designed to house books. Its high, sloping roof provided improved air circulation, and very few windows were built to prevent dust from entering. In 1929, Higginbothams had as many as 400 employees.
The company's second bookstore in Bangalore located at M. G. Road, opened in 1905 and is the oldest existing bookstore in the city. The store was located in a two-storey Graeco-Roman-style building constructed in 1897.
Higginbothams has a chain of 22 outlets spread across the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Since 1949, Higginbothams has been owned by the Amalgamations Group.
