Founded by James Augustus Hickey, the Bengal Gazette was a weekly newspaper, and was founded in 1779, in Calcutta, the capital of British India.

The newspaper was written from Jail because  Hickey had earned the wrath of the then Governor-General Lord Warren Hastings as he would mostly write articles criticising the activities of Lady Hastings, Lord Hasting’s wife. Hickey continued to write from jail until his movable types were seized from him under Lord Hasting’s orders. Hickey’s Bengal Gazette or the Calcutta General Advertiser was the first English language newspaper, and indeed the first printed newspaper, to be published in the Indian sub-continent. The newspaper soon became very famous not only among the British soldiers posted in India at that time, it also inspired the Indians to write newspapers of their own .The paper itself survived until the 1830s, when its circulation was exceeded by The Englishman (also published from Calcutta from 1818, and now known as The Statesman).