Senior Founds Publishing House; Will Print Unconventional Works

A Harvard undergraduate, James Robinson '66, has founded a new publishing house in Cambridge. Robinson's project, the Identify Press, will publish its first book by early June.

Robinson plans to publish three books a year, two of which will be numbers in the New Cambridge Series of American Writers while the third will be a special project. Books in the series will consist of poetry, drams, or fiction.

"It seemed logical to start a press in Cambridge, where there are commercial and academic publishing houses, but whose function is not to be artistically daring." Robinson explained. Identity Press hopes to fill is the vacuum with serious, non-academic, non-commercial writing, he continued.

Robinson hopes he can publish only those books which are unconventional without being merely eccentric. "We are not looking for academic poetry with the standard conventions or novels of young love," he said. "We will not publish something which is simply the latest thing."

Identity Press, Robinson said, will attempt to open channels of commutation between reader and publisher. He explained that he hoped to make subscribers feel they are part of the publishing venture by soliciting ideas and criticisms about the works being published.

Robinson also publishes identify Magazine which started in 1958 and will soon print its twenty-third issue. While Identity Magazine usually publishes works by Harvard students. Identify Press will search further afield for its authors. The magazine differs from most other Harvard publications because each issue is devoted almost entirely to one artist, and presents a substantial body of his work.

The press's first book will be The Chipped Wall, and epistolary novel by Juan Alonso. The special project this year will be a book by Jean Grenier entitled Conversations on the Good Uses of Freedom.