Harvard University Press (
HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and focused on
academic publishingAcademic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...
. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the
Association of American University PressesThe Association of American University Presses is an association of mostly, but not exclusively, North American university presses...
. Its current director is William P. Sisler and the editor-in-chief is Susan Wallace Boehmer.
The press maintains offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near
Harvard SquareHarvard Square is a large triangular area in the center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street, and John F. Kennedy Street. It is the historic center of Cambridge...
, and in London, England.
Notable HUP authors include
Eudora WeltyEudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...
,
Walter BenjaminWalter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
,
E. O. WilsonEdward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....
,
John RawlsJohn Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University....
,
Emily DickinsonEmily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
,
Stephen Jay GouldStephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
,
Helen VendlerHelen Hennessy Vendler is a leading American critic of poetry.-Life and career:Vendler has written books on Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens, John Keats, and Seamus Heaney. She has been a professor of English at Harvard University since 1984; between 1981 and 1984 she taught...
, and
Carol GilliganCarol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...
.
The Display Room in Harvard Square, dedicated to selling HUP publications, closed on June 17, 2009. HUP has lent its name to the Harvard comma, because its house manual of style favors its use.
Related publishers, imprints, and series
HUP owns the Belknap Press
imprintIn the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
, which it inaugurated in May 1954 with the publication of the
Harvard Guide to American History.
It distributes the
Loeb Classical LibraryThe Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each...
and
I Tatti Renaissance LibraryThe I Tatti Renaissance Library is a book series published by the Harvard University Press, which aims to present important works of Italian Renaissance Latin Literature to a modern audience by printing the original Latin text on each left-hand leaf , and an English translation on the facing page...
series. It is distinct from
Harvard Business PressHarvard Business Press is the book-specific division of Harvard Business School Publishing, owned by the Harvard Business School, based in Boston, MA.The Press publishes general interest books in addition to business books...
, which is part of Harvard Business Publishing, and the independent Harvard Common Press.
Political bias
A 2011 study of the books published by Harvard University Press during the 2000-2010 period and connected to political ideology found that out of 494 only eight "had an outlook that was conspicuously either classical liberal or conservative".
External links