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Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge University Press is a printer and publisher granted a Royal Letters Patent by Henry VIII in 1534. It is the world's oldest continually operating book publisher. Cambridge is both an academic and educational publishing house, with a regional structure operating in the Americas, in United Kingdom/Europe/Middle-East/Africa, and in Asia-Pacific.
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Cambridge University Press is a printer and publisher granted a Royal Letters Patent by Henry VIII in 1534. It is the world's oldest continually operating book publisher. Cambridge is both an academic and educational publishing house, with a regional structure operating in the Americas, in United Kingdom/Europe/Middle-East/Africa, and in Asia-Pacific. Headquartered in Cambridge UK, the company has warehousing centres in Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, São Paulo, New Delhi, Tokyo and Singapore, with offices and agents in many other countries. Its publishing output includes major ELT courses; tertiary textbooks and monographs; scientific and medical reference; professional lists in law, management and engineering; educational coursebooks; and e-learning materials for schools via the Cambridge-Hitachi joint venture.
Its publications are aimed at markets worldwide, at all levels from primary school to postgraduate and professional. The Press also publishes Bibles, s, and some 230 academic journals.
History
Cambridge University Press is both the oldest publishing house in the world and the oldest university press. It originated from Letters Patent (similar to a royal charter) granted to the University of Cambridge by Henry VIII in 1534, and has been producing books continuously since the first University Press book was printed in 1584. Cambridge is one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press).
Authors published by Cambridge have included John Milton, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking.
Canto
CUP has a division called 'Canto' that offers economical reprints of their more popular books in a (often smaller) paperback form. They are direct reprints but might lack inessential figures and illustrations. The editions state, "Canto is a paperback imprint which offers a broad range of titles, both classic and more recent, representing some of the best and most enjoyable of Cambridge publishing."
Controversy
In 2007, controversy arose over CUP's decision to destroy all remaining copies of its 2006 book, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, by Burr and Collins, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz. Within hours, Alms for Jihad became one of the 100 most sought after titles on Amazon.Com and eBay in the United States. CUP sent a letter to libraries asking them to remove copies from circulation. CUP subsequently sent out copies of an "errata" sheet. The American Library Association issued a recommendation to libraries still holding Alms for Jihad: "Given the intense interest in the book, and the desire of readers to learn about the controversy first hand, we recommend that U.S. libraries keep the book available for their users." The decision did not have the support of the book's authors and was criticized by some who claimed it was incompatible with freedom of speech and with freedom of the press and that it indicated that English libel laws were excessively strict. In a New York Times Book Review (7 October 2007), United States Congressman Frank R. Wolf described Cambridge's settlement as "basically a book burning."
In 2008, more controversy followed CUP in the wake of their release of a textbook, Contemporary Fiction: The Novel Since 1990, edited by Pamela Bickley. In an article by literary critic Dan Schneider, it was claimed that in a section of the book where a negative excerpt from his review of Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth was compared to another review, editor Bickley deliberately distorted Schneider's excerpt by taking it out of context by the use of an ellipsis that made it appear his review did not deal with the substance of the novel, nor include supporting quotations from the book, as opposed to an unedited excerpt, with a quotation, from a positive review printed in the New York Times. It was also claimed that CUP deliberately biased the readers of its textbook in the phrasing of student questions posed after the section on Smith's novel, and that CUP even failed to properly credit the writer per his request.
End of Printing at Cambridge University Press
In early 2009 CUP announced major redundancies in the printing division, from 170 employees to just 37, with further redundancies expected in three years time spelling the end of more than 425 years of production.
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