Subscription Publishing and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Indian Print Culture.

This article challenges the prevailing belief that Indian print culture emerged in the nineteenth century by exploring the participation of Indians in print culture in the late eighteenth century. It reveals that Indians were actively involved in print culture as both readers and patrons, contributing to periodicals, reading newspapers, and handling official documents. Subscription publishing, a method that limited risk and raised funds in advance, gained popularity in India, with Indian names appearing on almost half of the extant lists of subscribers to books published in India during the eighteenth century. The article argues that this early Indian experience with print laid the foundation for its later proliferation, contradicting the notion that Indian print culture only emerged after the arrival of foreign institutions. [Extracted from the article]