Nicholson Faculty Lecture

Majestic Patronage: Muslim and Christian Printing at the Lucknow Royal Press, 1819–1849

Despite its importance as the first Muslim-owned printing press in northern India, the Matba‘-i Sultani, established by the King of Awadh in Lucknow in 1819, has received little scholarly attention. Best known for its production of Haft Qulzum (1821), a Persian dictionary and grammar, the Royal Press epitomizes the momentous transition from movable type to lithography in North India at an early stage in the global spread of print technology. It coincided with a shift from Muslim to European agency at the press. This talk highlights an untold story of Christian educational printing at His Majesty’s Lithographic Press, complicating standard narratives of the trajectory of print in nineteenth-century India. In tracing the history of the Royal Press over its existence of thirty years, I examine the participation of Awadh’s Shi’i Muslim rulers and local European actors in the production of printed knowledge and discuss material and cultural factors shaping pre-commercial print culture in the multilingual setting of Lucknow.

Ulrike Stark is a scholar of modern Hindi literature and South Asian book history. Her main research interests are in the cultural and intellectual history of North India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a specific focus on print culture, public intellectual life, education, and gender.