John Clark Marshman

John Clark Marshman (1794–1877) was an English journalist and historian. He was editor and publisher of the Calcutta-based Friend of India and was involved with several other Indian publications.

Marshman was the first child of Joshua Marshman and Hannah Marshman and was born in August 1794 at Bristol, England where his father was at that time a schoolmaster, before later emigrating to India as a missionary.

At the age of 5, Marshman travelled with his parents and William Ward on an American ship called the Criterion to Bengal, arriving in Serampore on Sunday morning, 13 October 1799.

In May 1800, his parents opened two boarding schools in Serampore; these became the most popular in the area and Marshman received his education from his parents. He was part of the growing mission family, eating at the communal table and joining with other children in Mission life; as one would expect he became a fluent Bengali speaker.

In April 1818, Marshman, together with his father Joshua, launched the first monthly magazine in Bengali, Digdarshan, which focused on educative information for the youth, and very shortly thereafter the weekly news magazine Samachar Darpan which was one of the two first Bengali newspapers (the other being Bengal Gazeti, published by Ganga Kishore Bhattacharya, in the first half of 1818). Subsequently, the Serampore Mission also launched the weekly Friend of India in 1821, which became so popular that Serampore was synonymous with Friend of India in European minds for much of the 19th century. The printing operations were so successful that they acquired their own substantial buildings by the river just north of the Mission Chapel.

In 1875, Friend of India amalgamated with another paper The Englishman, becoming The Statesman which remains one of India's leading English-language dailies.

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