UNIVERSITY PRESS

With the appearance of the annual Fall list of the University Press comes the realization that this potentially powerful institution has once more lapsed into the narrow confines of pedantry and musty research. Theses on such subjects as "French Revolutionary Legislation on Illcgitimacy, 1789-1804" or "Cutover Old Field Pine Lands in Central New England" swell the stacks hidden in the gloomy recesses of Widener, and furnish excellent material for research along such lines, if any is contemplated. They do not, however, lend either to the University Press, or to the College, that general interest and recognition which one would expect as the due of the American counterpart of Oxford and Cambridge.

The English Universities have long been renowned for the output of their presses. "The Oxford Companion to English Literature" and the "Cambridge Histories" hold positions of unique importance throughout British scholastic circles and Yale has ably followed their lead with the "Chronicles of America" and "Series of Younger Pocts". Such work on the part of a University press adds immeasurably to the prestige of the parent body and stimulates interest both in the college and elsewhere.

If the Harvard press can widen its scope, printing, naturally, works by members of the faculty, yet including subjects of broader interest than specialized research, it can have a very great part to play in maintaining that note of progressive liberality which Harvard so ably sounded at the Tercentenary. As edition of American classics, an anthology or even a Companion to American Verse would awaken interest immensely in both the American classics and the University press itself.