Mangal Samachar (Gospel of Matthew)
Mangal Samachar (Gospel of Matthew)
William Carey (translator) · 1800
The press's first book
The Baptist missionaries William Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward set up this press in 1800 at Serampore, then a Danish town on the Hooghly. Ward ran it. The type-cutter Panchanan Karmakar and his son-in-law Manohar built a foundry beside it and cut Bengali type, and in time type for many other scripts.
Its first book was the Gospel of Matthew in Bengali. It went on to print Ram Ram Basu's Raja Pratapaditya Charitra, Carey's Bengali grammar and dictionary, textbooks for Fort William College, the first printed Krittivasi Ramayan, and in 1818 two of the earliest Bengali periodicals, Digdarshan and Samachar Darpan. By 1832 it had issued about 212,000 books in some forty languages.
A fire in 1812 destroyed manuscripts and type, but the presses were saved. The press closed in 1837 and its type passed to the Baptist Mission Press in Calcutta. Some of its books are on show at the Carey Museum in Serampore College.
The house itself is gone. Ask the desk, and we will look for its books in reprint or second-hand.
