Jeremy Norman’sHistoryofInformation.com Exploring the History of Information and Media through Timelines
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A: Newland, College Square, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
In 1777 two presses were set up almost simultaneously in India, one in Calcutta by James Augustus Hicky, who later printed India’s first newspaper, Hicky’s Bengal Gazette)1and another in the small town of Hooghly by Nathaniel Brassley Halhed and Charles Wilkins, who issued the first Bengali grammar in 1778. Hicky was at the time imprisoned for debts in the Calcutta jail, but managed to get his hands on a printing press and began publishing from the jail. This unlikely story comes from Graham Shaw, Printing in Calcutta to 1800. London: The Bibliographical Society, 1981, p. 52.
In November 1777 Hicky was approached by a missionary named Johann Zachariah Kiernander to print calendars for the next year. Kiernander had been importing calendars from South India and was looking for a cheaper alternative. However, there was a disagreement over price, so the Kiernander went in search of his own printing press.
Blogs.soas.ac.uk dated 28th June 2019 raises doubts as to whether the first book printed in Calcutta was printed by Hicky, suggesting that it might have been printed Kiernander's son Robert:
"By January 1778 Kiernander’s son Robert appears to have acquired a press, although it is unclear from where. On 7 January he wrote a letter to missionary colleagues in Halle, Germany saying that he had begun printing calendars and advertising them for sale in Calcutta.
" ‘I have bought here a very small English printing press with which I have just printed an English almanac of which I am sending you a copy as a sample in this letter. I saw often the printing press at Halle so I can well remember everything that is needed. This work is a pleasure for me…’2
"These calendars set off a competition that soon turned rancorous. Hicky began printing his own calendars. Unable to compete with Hicky on price – and upset that Hicky had very likely plagiarized their calendar – the Kiernanders began giving theirs away for free. (The disagreements later became so rancorous that later Hicky used his newspaper to accuse the elder Kiernander of embezzling from a charity and Kiernander sued Hicky for libel).
So whose calendars are these in the SOAS library? Hicky’s or the Kiernanders’?"