The oldest existing bookstore of India - Higginbotham's

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Higginbotham’s is the oldest bookstore and book publisher in existence in India. The main store of Higginbotham’s is located in Mount Road (Anna Salai) in Chennai. If you are a bookworm/book lover based out of Chennai, you would have certainly visited this store. This book store is so popular that no book lover visiting the city can miss it. 



In the 1840s, when India was under British rule, an English man named Abel Joshua Higginbotham was appointed as a librarian of a bookstore called Wesleyan Book Shop run by the Protestant missionaries. The book store did not run successfully, and to avoid further loss, the missionaries wanted to sell off the book store for a low price. Higginbotham, who worked as a librarian in the book store, bought the book store and named it Higginbotham’s. The bookstore became very popular very soon, and in the 1850s and 1860s, people started considering Higginbotham’s as one of the significant bookstores of South India. The business spread to various other locations of the city and various other South Indian cities over the years.


The building is a beautiful heritage structure. Forever, it would remain the favorite location for book lovers based out of Chennai.


Happy reading….happy travelling.


Visit my site, krishnakumartk.com, to know more about the travel guides and other books that I have written.



Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Comments

  1. mannabThursday, January 14, 2010

    Once again you have given such an information which is outstanding one.The book store established in 1850 and still going on, is definitely ray of hope for the book lovers in and around India. I would have also loved more to view this book store from inside . Thanks.
    Mangesh Nabar

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rangan BadriFriday, April 01, 2011

    Wow! I never knew this history behind my all-time favorite Higginbotham's. Tks for blogging about this.

    ReplyDelete

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