Medical Hall Press was a publishing house based in

Benares Varanasi (, also Benares, Banaras ) or Kashi, is a city on the Ganges, Ganges river in North India, northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hinduism, Hindu world.* * * * The city ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

in the nineteenth century, during which it was the city's foremost press. It published Sanskrit philosophical literature and plays, including

Jayadeva Jayadeva (; born ), also spelt Jaideva, was a Sanskrit poet during the 12th century. He is most known for his epic poem ''Gita Govinda'' which concentrates on Krishna's love with the ''gopi'', Radha, in a rite of spring. This poem, which presen ...

's ''Prasannaraghava'' and

Rajashekhara Rajasekhara may refer to: * Rama Rajasekhara/Cheraman Perumal "Nayanar" (''fl.'' 9th century), theologian, devotional poet and ruler from south India * Rajashekhara (Sanskrit poet) (''fl.'' 10th century), Sanskrit poet, dramatist and critic * ...

's ''Balaramayana''. It also published Hindi writer

Premchand Dhanpat Rai Srivastava (31 July 1880 – 8 October 1936), better known as Munshi Premchand based on his pen name Premchand (), was an Indian writer famous for his modern Hindustani language, Hindustani literature. Premchand was a pioneer ...

's now-lost novel 1907 ''Kishna''. Its secondary literature includes reference material like textbooks in Hindi and English, which were translated to Urdu, as well as dictionaries. The press also published missionary literature as well as colonial photography and scholarship, including Frederic Growse's '' Bulandshahr: Or, Sketches of an Indian District.'' The press had fonts for various scripts, including

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, and

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

. Stark, Ulrike (1998). 'Inside a nineteenth-century publishing house: The Newal Kishore Press in Lucknow as a new kind of literary and intellectual centre', unpubl. paper, presented at the 15th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Prague, Sept 1998. cited in Pandits and Printers Medical Hall Press, founded by E.J. Lazarus in 1854, is also known as E.J. Lazarus & Co. It was one of three European-owned printing presses in nineteenth-century

colonial India Colonial India was the part of the Indian subcontinent that was occupied by European colonial powers during and after the Age of Discovery. European power was exerted both by conquest and trade, especially in spice trade, spices. The search for ...

. It operated until at least the 1920s.

References

{{Reflist Publishing companies of India British India Indian literature