Graham Shaw

Graham Shaw is a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, London University.  In 2010 he retired from the British Library after 20 years as Head of Asia, Pacific & Africa Collections.  

His career began in the School of Oriental & African Studies Library, London University.  In 1974 he joined the British Library’s Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books (OMPB) as Curator of North Indian Languages.  10 years later he became Head of European Printed Books in the India Office Library (IOL).  In 1987 he moved into senior management, amalgamating OMPB and IOL for the move into the British Library’s new building at St Pancras.  

For 40 years he has lectured and published on the history of printing in South Asia from the 16th to the 20th centuries.  In 2004 he gave the McKenzie Lecture at Oxford University and in 2011 the 7th Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book at the University of California Los Angeles.  Among his publications are Printing in Calcutta to 1800: a description and checklist of printing in late 18th-century Calcutta (1981), Publications proscribed by the Government of India: a catalogue of the collections in the India Office Library and Records and the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books (1985) and The South Asia and Burma Retrospective Bibliography (SABREB): Stage 1: 1556-1800 (1987).  ‘From Goa to the Gutenberg Award: the story of Indian typography’, appeared in Typo 49 (2012).