This dataset comprises 81 digitised images (TIFF files) drawn from a selection of early printed Bengali books (1713-1914) digitised through the Two Centuries of Indian Print project (https://www.bl.uk/projects/two-centuries-of-indian-print). Also contained are ground truth transcriptions (XML) for each page that can be used for training optical character recognition software on historical Bengali printed text. The folder contains the images and ground truth used for the REID2019 competition (https://www.primaresearch.org/REID2019/), part of ICDAR 2019 (https://icdar2019.org/competitions-2/). The images are out of copyright and the transcriptions are also public domain. This dataset is an updated version of Ground Truth transcriptions for training OCR of historical Bengali printed texts – Recognition of Early Indian Printed Documents competition with 48 xml files updated with more accurate text line coordinates.

The REID2019.ZIP file is 1.26 GB and contains: 81 high resolution (400dpi) images in TIFF format accompanied by transcriptions in PAGE XML. Shelfmarks are used for all file names. This work was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the Newton Fund and the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy.