Books, Print & Stationery in Kolkata

College Street — boi para, the book neighbourhood — is the largest second-hand book market in Asia and has been selling books since the middle of the nineteenth century. Around it sit the publishers, the printers, the binderies and the paper trade, and behind that the university, the medical college and the presidency college that created the demand.

Much of the stock is textbooks, but the pavement stalls carry out-of-print Bengali literature that exists nowhere else, and the sellers know what they have.

Name	Where	What they carry
College Street boi para1850s	College Street	Asia’s largest second-hand book market; several thousand stalls and shops.
Dasgupta & Co.1886	College Street	One of the oldest bookshops on the street.
Ananda Publishers1957	College Street area	A major Bengali publishing house.
Dey’s Publishing1960s	College Street	Bengali literature and reference.
Rupa & Co.1936	College Street	Publisher and bookseller.
Oxford Bookstore1920	Park Street	The Park Street bookshop, with a tea bar.
Story2012	Elgin Road	An independent bookshop in the south.
Indian Coffee House1942	Bankim Chatterjee Street	In the middle of the book market, and part of it.

Name	Where	What they carry
Jadavpur University book stalls	Jadavpur	A smaller boi para serving the university.
Golpark bookshops	Golpark, Gariahat	Ramakrishna Mission bookshop and others.

Worth knowing

• Ask the stallholder rather than browsing; they know their own stock
• Bargaining is normal on the pavement, less so in the shops
• The Bengali publishing houses are on the same street as the sellers
• The Coffee House is in the middle of it, which is not an accident
• The Kolkata Book Fair in January is the other event in this trade

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A note on this page. Restaurants, shops and markets open, move and close far more often than industries do. Everything here is a snapshot of Kolkata as of 2026, offered as a starting point rather than a live listing. Check the address and the hours before you travel.

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