Page "Oxford University Press" Paragraph 41

When OUP arrived on Indian shores, it was preceded by the immense prestige of the Sacred Books of the East, edited by Friedrich Max Müller, which had at last reached completion in 50 ponderous volumes.

While actual purchase of this series was beyond the means of most Indians, libraries usually had a set, generously provided by the government of India, available on open reference shelves, and the books had been widely discussed in the Indian press.

Although there had been plenty of criticism of them, the general feeling was that Max Müller had done India a favour by popularising ancient Asian ( Persian, Arabic, Indian and Sinic ) philosophy in the West.

This prior reputation was useful, but the Indian Branch was not primarily in Bombay to sell Indological books, which OUP knew already sold well only in America.

It was there to serve the vast educational market created by the rapidly expanding school and college network in British India.

In spite of disruptions caused by war, it won a crucial contract to print textbooks for the Central Provinces in 1915 and this helped to stabilize its fortunes in this difficult phase.

E. V. Rieu could not longer delay his callup and was drafted in 1917, the management then being under his wife Nellie Rieu, a former editor for the Athenaeum ‘ with the assistance of her two British babies .’ It was too late to have important electrotype and stereotype plates shipped to India from Oxford, and the Oxford printing house itself was overburdened with government printing orders as the empire ’ s propaganda machine got to work.

At one point non-governmental composition at Oxford was reduced to 32 pages a week.