A Selection of Books

Nirmal Chandra Kumar was the first antiquarian in India. An antiquarian is a person who studies, collects antiques or deals in antiques books. When I meet persons from his fraternity, they ask me who is the second? In fact internationally he is more renowned as the ‘Antiquarian of Calcutta’. He was engaged the whole day rummaging through antique books, maps and prints. Books was his love. He had a well-appointed library of nearly a hundred thousand books. Spread over his drawing room and other rooms in his home in Lower Circular Road. It was like acres and acres of Vellum and Morocco bound books of all sized from Duodecimo to Elephantine. Books on all subjects from 16th to 17th. Century lined in the wall. Bound immaculately with the names embossed in gold.

Kumar used to collect these books not only from all over India but from abroad as they came up in auction and his agents were directed to bid for books specifically on India on all subjects. He also collected these books by ordering them from many antiquarian book-dealers in England such as Bernard Quaritch, Blackwells, Maggs Brothers, Mcleish & Company C. J. Sawyer, Hatchards, Luzacs & Company, and others. From art, travel, ornithology, botany, history, literature, mountaineering, religion, Indology. Nirmal Kumar was probably the first Indian bookseller to publish a rare books catalogue in the best tradition of bespoke antiquarians around the world. There was no greater authority on antiquarian books in India than Kumar.

Radha Prasad Gupta, the writer, collector and bibliophile compared him to Jorge Luis Borges the Argentine bibliophile, short-story writer, essayist and poet, for his love of books.