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Founded | 1943 |
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Founder | D. K. Gupta |
Country of origin | India |
Headquarters location | College Street, (in front of Sanskrit College), Kolkata, West Bengal |
Publication types | Books |
Signet Press is a publishing house established in 1943 in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, by Dilip Kumar Gupta (popularly known as D. K.) and his mother-in-law Neelima Guha Thakurta. [1] [2]
The house is located in the book arcade of College Street in front of Sanskrit College. The film director Satyajit Ray worked as a visual designer for Signet Press at the beginning of his career, and many of the house's publications have covers designed by him. [3] The press has published many books, including Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India , Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's Pather Panchali and Chander Pahar , and Jibanananda Das's Rupasi Bangla and Banalata Sen . Toward the end of the 1970s, D.K. Gupta fell sick and soon died, resulting in the temporary closure of the business. It was revived at a later date after its purchase by the Ananda Publishers.
In Boiyer Ghor, writer Shankha Ghosh comments on the publishing house in relation to its location and poetry publications:
"Then came the store of Signet press. That is, it came to College Street. Even in the forties, many books were published from Signet, with its infallible mark of elegance, its selection and printing. But with the opening of its new store on Bankim Chatterjee Street, we no longer had to wander from place to place looking for books of poetry, be it Jibanananda Das or Sudhindranath Dutta. Dilip Kumar Gupta's diligent work on the neatness of printing (everyone knows him as DK), Satyajit Ray's excellent taste of aesthetics illustrating its covers, and the writings of modern poets - all these combined to create a dream world for all of us. The years of fifty-two and fifty-three, when we were at our twenty-one years of age, we saw the publication of new books from Signet, coming before our eyes one after the other; 'Banalata Sen', 'Sanvarta', 'Parapar', 'Naam rekhechi Komal Gandhar', 'Amavasya!'. Then came the new edition of 'Orchestra' with a brand new, changed, introduction of which we began to return to our mouths: ‘I am rooted in darkness, rising towards the light’. ‘Samar Sen’s Poems’. The new versions of 'Swagata' and 'Kulaya O Kalpurush' to be released from Signet in their new attire were still a few years away. It is safe to say that Signet also brought a lot of courage to modern poetry. They also started publishing books by young poets like Naresh Guha and Nirendranath Chakravarti. Besides, new versions of 'Prothoma' and 'Samrat', or 'Winter Prayer: Answer to Spring' appeared in different houses. We no longer have any thoughts for poetry books. Signet's organization was ubiquitous, with a liberal call for 'read poetry, read poetry'. They even had a lot of new ideas to pull the aspiring mind from many directions, like giving a little lovely slip with a book to write a gift."
— Shankha Ghosh, Boiyer Ghor
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Jibanananda Das was a Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist in the Bengali language. Popularly called "Rupashi Banglar Kabi'', Das is the most read Bengali poet after Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bangladesh and West Bengal. While not particularly well recognised during his lifetime, today Das is acknowledged as one of the greatest poets in the Bengali language.
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Chidananda Das Gupta —family name sometimes spelled 'Dashgupta' and 'Dasgupta'—was an Indian filmmaker, film critic, a film historian and one of the founders of Calcutta Film Society with Satyajit Ray in 1947. He lived and worked in Calcutta and Santiniketan.
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