Orient Blackswan Pvt. Ltd., formerly Orient Longman India, commonly referred to as Orient Longman, is an Indian
publishing house
Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
headquartered in
Hyderabad
Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...
,
Telangana
Telangana is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated in the Southern India, south-central part of the Indian subcontinent on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, ele ...
.
The company publishes academic, professional and general works as well as school textbooks, of which the "Gul Mohar" series of English-language school books grew popular. It also publishes low cost reprints of foreign titles.
History
Established in 1948 as Longman Green by the
UK publishing company
Longman
Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publisher, publishing company founded in 1724 in London, England, which is owned by Pearson PLC.
Since 1968, Longman has been used primarily as an imprint by Pearson's Schools business. The Longman ...
, it was taken over by
J. Rameshwar Rao, who bought the majority shareholding and became the company chairman in 1968. Rao retained the majority holding till 1984. The company's board included
Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh FKC (born Khushal Singh, 2 February 1915 – 20 March 2014) was an Indian author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and politician. His experience in the 1947 Partition of India inspired him to write '' Train to Pakistan'' in 1956 ( ...
and the
Patwardhan
Patwardhan may refer to the surname used by members of the Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin community belonging to the Kaundinya gotra. The Karhade Patwardhans belong to the Kashyapa and Naidhruva Gotra and their history in the Rajapur region of the K ...
s of
Pune
Pune ( ; , ISO 15919, ISO: ), previously spelled in English as Poona (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1978), is a city in the state of Maharashtra in the Deccan Plateau, Deccan plateau in Western ...
.
The "Indianisation" of Orient Longman's management during this period was also reflected in its product, where Indian writers found an increasingly prominent place. Also during this period various subsidiaries came about such as Orion Books, and Gyan Publishings which sprang up as entrepreneurial enterprises from individuals based in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata such as B.K. Todi, Saugat Biswas, Varun Tamble and many others.
Disputes
In 2006, the
Pearson Education
Pearson Education, known since 2011 as simply Pearson, is the educational publishing and services subsidiary of the international corporation Pearson plc. The subsidiary was formed in 1998, when Pearson plc acquired Simon & Schuster's educatio ...
group, which holds a minority stake in Orient Longman as well as the rights to the "Longman" brand worldwide, sued Orient Longman asserting its claim on the brand. In 2008, Orient Longman agreed to drop the "Longman" suffix in an out-of-court settlement, and the company was renamed Orient Blackswan.
References
Bibliography
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Orient BlackSwan
Book publishing companies of India
Industries in Hyderabad, India
1948 establishments in India