The Indian Railway Library was an enterprise conducted in Allahabad from 1888. It was a publishing venture of A. H. Wheeler & Co., who "had the monopoly on bookstall sales on Indian railway stations" [1] It was a series of pamphlets intended to catch the interest of railway passengers, and offer cheap "throwaway" reading material.

The series began as a result of an initiative by Rudyard Kipling as he sought to assemble funds to return to England from India in 1888: he approached the senior partner of A. H. Wheeler & Co., Émile Moreau,[2][3] with the proposal to publish his stories in cheap booklet form. The booklets were to have grey-green card covers, with illustrations by Rudyard's father John Lockwood Kipling.

Six booklets were initially produced, which sold at the price of one rupee. They were all by Rudyard Kipling, and consisted mainly of reprints of stories that had already appeared in various of the periodicals for which he was already writing in India. They were all published in 1888. Twenty volumes followed, of which nine were by other authors; the last appears to have been published in 1894.

The following volumes were included:[4]

By Kipling:

Other authors:

The One-Eyed Forger, and Other Detective Stories by R. Reid, and Under the Rose by Ivan O'Beirne were announced but probably not published.

References

  1. ^ Lycett, Andrew (1999). Rudyard Kipling. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 165. ISBN 0-297-81907-0.
  2. ^ Anu Kumar, The mysterious European businessman who gave India its iconic railway book stalls, Quartz India, 24 August 2015. Retrieved on 9 March 2017.
  3. ^ EMILE EDOUARD MOREAU CBE (1871-72), The Society of Old Framlinghamians. Retrieved on 9 March 2017.
  4. ^ "Indian Railway Library (A. H. Wheeler & Co.) - Book Series List". publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 13 July 2022.
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