The company's first bookstore at Mount Road, Chennai is India's oldest bookshop still in existence,[1][2] founded in 1844.

[3][4][5] In the 1840s, he found employment as a librarian with a bookstore named Wesleyan Book Shop run by Protestant missionaries.

[3][4] However, the store suffered heavy losses and the missionaries who ran the business decided to sell their shop for a low price.

In this bookshop I can see beautiful editions of the works of Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Horace, Petrarch, Tasso, Camoyens, Calderon and Racine.

[6] Higginbotham's were appointed as the "official booksellers to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales" during the latter's visit to India in 1875.

[7] Higginbotham's became official book-supplier to government and to various institutions, with different customers from British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (in office 1945-1951) to the last Maharaja of Mysore, Jayachamaraja Wodeyar.

[4] In 1904, the company's diamond jubilee year, the bookstore shifted to its current location on Mount Road.

Its high, sloping roof provided improved air circulation, and very few windows were built to prevent dust from entering.

[11] In 1925, John Oakshott Robinson of the Spencer's conglomerate purchased Higginbotham's, and merged the company with his printing firm Associated Printers, to establish Associated Publishers.

[10] Higginbothams has a chain of 22 outlets spread across the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala.