The University Press: An Unwanted Child That Has Grown Up on Its Own Initiative

A Professor on the Press: "A beehive of drones and queens, proud of their brand of honey."

The Comparative Ethology and Evolution of the Sand Wasps. Howard E. Evans. 1966. $15.

Serbocroation Heroic Songs. Vol. I, Novi Pazar: English Translations. Wilman Parry. 1954. $12.50.

China: The People's Middle Kingdom and the U.S.A. John King Fairbank. 1967. Belknap. $2.95.

Tin Cans and Tin Plates: A Study in Two Related Markets. J. W. McKie. 1959. $7.50.

The Founding of Harvard College. Samuel Eliot Morison. 1935. $5.00.

The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Thomas H. Johnson and T. V. Wards, eds. 3 vol. set. 1958. $25.00.

How Russia is Ruled. Merle Fainsod. Revised ed., 1963. $8.95.

In a bare brick building a mile from the Square up Garden Street, the staff of the Harvard University Press every year sifts hundreds of esoteric manuscripts and publishes some 150. The Press's titles are diverse, and the six-fold increase in sales over the last two decades is proof of the University's encouragement of its once unwanted child.

Completely removed from undergraduate life, and useful to only those Faculty members who take the initiative in submitting their works, the Press seems to be the least integral of Harvard's many organs. Yet the Press's policy, according to Thomas J. Wilson, its director for 20 years, is "to publish as many good scholarly books as possible short of bankruptcy." That is its justification, for accessible scholarship is the sine qua non of a university.

The Press was nearly annihilated during the war years, but financial windfalls and the struggles of supporters made Harvard decide to maintain and strengthen it. The Press now edits, designs and lays out, arranges for the printing of, promotes, and helps distribute all over the world more than 100 series of books, all of them good scholarly books."

Alumni gifts have allowed establishment of many of these series. One of the oldest, and the largest, is the Loeb Classical Library, a 400-volume presentation of Greek and Latin works with the original text on the lefthand page and the translation on the right. Supported by a $300,000 endowment, it is the bequest of James C. Loeb '88, a bachelor banker who after his retirement in 1901 lived in a Bavarian castle surrounded by books.

The death of another banker in 1949 marked the Press's major step toward solvency and the capacity to undertake large projects. Waldron Phoenix Belknap, Jr., '20, banker, architect, and amateur scholar (American Colonial Printing: Materials for a History), bequeathed about a million dollars to the Press, to be used to publish "inaccessible or hitherto unpublished source material of interest in connection with the history, literature, art (including minor and useful art), commerce, customs and manners, or way of life of the Colonial and Federal periods of the United States."

With this legacy, part of it consisting of as yet unvalued Texas oil lands, the Press set up "the Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press." Under its aegis are published the John Harvard Library, including such American fiction of historical interest as Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the Adams Papers, which President Kennedy called "a major feat in American historical scholarship."

When the full extent of Belknap's endowment became known, the Press began using the Belknap imprint for more than Americana. Now a quarter of the books the Press publishes are awarded the imprint in recognition of their superiority. Recent Belknap books include Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward 2000-1887 and John K. Fairbank's China: The People's Middle Kingdom and the U.S.A.

Few of the Press's publications are as widely circulated as these, however. Although some books -- Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, by Amy Kelly, for example--have made the best seller list, the Press's confinement to the realm of scholarship prevents a wide readership for most of its books.

Defining good scohlarship is the job of the Board of Syndics, one of the Press's three administrative bodies. The 14-man Board includes Press Director Wilson as Chairman; Ernst Mayr, Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology; Simon S. Kuznets, George F. Baker Professor of Economics; Crane Brinton '19, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History; and Konrad E. Bloch, Higgins Professor of Biochemistry. It meets for two hours every month to decide which of the manuscripts that have survived readings by a Press staff member in the field and one or more outside experts--often Harvard professors--should be published.

One professor whose book, which he described as "an innovation in scholarship," was rejected, complained that the Press chooses conservative readers who disdain "anything that doesn't plod along the same old rut." But the Press's system of obtaining several readings of disputed works and the generally forward-looking attitude of the Board of Syndics makes such complaints rare.

The Press gets manuscripts from all over, and most require serious consideration. "Of course," Wilson says, "we get our share of nuts who send poems that are not poems, ways to save the world and such, but that is part of publishing life." The editorial policy is to publish both specialists' books, works on the leading edge of scholarship, and books in the general area of adult education.

With its imprint being available regardless of an author's university affiliation, the Press is not so much an arm of Harvard as a parasite. But if there are two equally good works and only one can be published, and one of them is by a Harvard author, that one will be chosen, Wilson says. And the Press publishes numerous works for such Harvard organizations as the Russian Research Center and the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

In 1958 the Press pitched into the University's fund-raising activities. As part of the Program for Harvard College it published "College in a Yard: Minutes by Thirty-Nine Harvard Men," a collection of noted alumni's writings on "What Harvard Has Meant to Me." Among the contributors were Brooks Atkinson, Van Wvck Brooks '08, John Dos Passos '16, John P. Marquand '15, Elward Streeter '14, and John F. Kennedy, '40.

Wilson, who because of the University's mandatory retirement policy must leave the Press this year, will go to a New York publishing firm. A tall Southern combination of forcefulness and gentleness who once addressed the Academy of Arts and Sciences in an impeccable blue pinstriped suit and desert books, he has been largely responsible for the Press's increased output in such formerly neglected fields as natural sciences and the history of science.

Wilson is also a member of the Press's Board of Directors, the body which controls the Press finances. Its ex officio chairman is L. Gard Wiggins, administrative vice president. Other members are George Pierce Baker, '25, Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration; Merle Fainsod, Director of the University Library; Erwin N. Griswold. Dean of the Faculty of Law: Edward S. Mason, Lamont University Professor; and Donald Scott, Peabody Professor of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Emeritus. The Board members are appointed by the President and Fellows of the University, and their distinction is a measure of Harvard's acceptance of the Press.

The Board meets quarterly to discuss finances. The Press gets its funds from endowments, foundation grants, its own profits, and an annual University loan.

Harvard was one of the first university presses to end the practice of requiring authors to subsidize unsaleable works. About the time that the Belknap fund was established the Press stopped the "bad and dangerous thing" which had occasionally been "allowed to affect the decision on publishing," in the director's words.

The Press has an advisory committee whose chairman is always selected from the Harvard Board of Overseers. Officially called the Overseers' Committee to Visit Harvard University Press, it is now headed by Judge Henry J. Friendly '23 of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Twenty years ago, the Committee was primarily the Press's fund-raiser and protector, but since the Press has grown stronger, the Committee has begun to act as a serious advisor.

At least a hundred people work in the cramped quarters of Kittredge Hall, named after George Lyman Kittredge in 1956 when the Press moved there. Acquisition of a warehouse across the Charles has alleviated some of the space shortage, but there is still not enough room for the Press's many departments, and the organization has great plans for future expansion.

In a recent interview with the Boston Globe. Wilson explained the increasing demand for scholarly books and predicted technological changes that would alter the entire publishing industry. More research, more public interest in scholarship, and the growth of libraries all over the world are necessitating more and more academic writing, he said.

The specifics of the Press's future are not clear. Even Wilson and the other officers of the Press have no idea who the President and Fellows will select as his successor. Another endless policy debate inside the Press is the question of paperbacks. It has long been the Press's policy to sell paperback rights to other publishers more able to distribute them and eager to pay good advances and royalties, contrary to other university Presses. Harvard's main reason for avoiding the lucrative paperback market is that it doesn't have a large enough staff to handle the extra burden. But future expansion may change that.

Wilson says that competition with other presses is in the wooing of authors and personnel rather than in the comparing of sales. "People do try to steal employees. We just got one of Yale's best editors," he says with a twinkle. "But as for getting editors from commercial publishing houses, it's pretty difficult since even if we could offer equivalent salaries, they still outrate us in fringe benefits."

A Harvard professor who has published several books with the Press made the most descriptive statement on it; "The Harvard University Press is a veritable beehive of queens and drones so proud of their band of honey they want to give everyone a taste.