Surviving Collections

Hicky printed his paper every Saturday from 29 January 1780 to 30 March 1782. Seven collections survive today, and every one is incomplete. The table below shows which library holds which issue.

The seven collections

• British Library, formerly the British Museum collection. Probably owned by George Livius, an ally of Philip Francis (see the issue of 3 March 1781). It was professionally photographed, and Andrew Otis's own transcriptions were made from it.
• British Library, India Office Library collection. The less complete of the two British Library sets. Part of it came from a private sale: the India Office Library bought the issue of 11 March 1780 for £200 at Bloomsbury Book Auctions in 1985. The 25 June 1781 Extraordinary and the issue of 30 March 1782 are microfilm copies. They were not in the bound volume Andrew viewed at the British Library.
• University of Heidelberg. Possibly from R. O. Wilkins, son of Charles Wilkins, the printer and Hicky's competitor. Archivists found it around 2014 while clearing out the basement of the university archive. It is free to view online at doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19957.
• National Library of India, Kolkata. The scans on this site are the pages Andrew was able to photocopy there, so they are fewer than the library holds.
• University of California, Berkeley, at the Bancroft Library. Collected by H. Morse Stephens some time before 1907, and probably once owned by Paul Ferris, one of Hicky's assistants. Professionally photographed.
• University of Melbourne. Formerly owned by Benoy Ghose, most likely the historian of early Calcutta who taught at Midnapore College. The university received it in 1970. A photograph of one of its pages appeared in a Tata Steel advertisement in 1962. It holds the only surviving copy of the Prospectus.
• High Court of Calcutta. Holds only the Extraordinary of 25 June 1781. The court did not allow copies, so Andrew made a transcription by hand.

Which collection has which issue

"Yes" means the library holds the issue, "Partial" means pages or sections are missing, and a blank means it does not have it. Click a date to read that issue. One issue, 6 January 1781, is not known to survive anywhere.

Based on Andrew Otis's survey of the collections, checked against the table on Wikipedia.