As Many Books As Possible Short of Bankruptcy

John Harvard’s Journal John Harvard’s JournalJournal

As Many Books as Possible Short of Bankruptcy Harvard got into the book-publishing the five Glover children into a house built fully Translated into English Metre (1640), later business in the 1640s. It happened this for him by the College in Harvard Yard. Very called the “Bay Psalm Book.” Colonists sang way. In 1638, Puritan clergyman Josse Glov- likely the press was operated by Stephen praises to God with this volume in hand.

er sailed for Massachusetts with his wife, Day’s son, Matthew, who was also the Col- A good book, like most that have followed V 302 (2-11); U Elizabeth, and their children, and a lock- lege steward. it from Harvard. (It also turned out to be smith named Stephen Day and his family. The third item to issue from this press a good investment. Only 11 copies of the The Glovers brought with them a printing was the first real book produced in the Eng- psalter are known to exist today, and in De- V 302 (1-5) press, type, and paper to print on. Josse died lish colonies, The Whole Book of Psalmes Faith- cember 2012, the congregants of Old South U on the voyage, Elizabeth moved into a big rd University Archives, H house in Cambridge, and set up the Days in a a smaller house with the printing equipment. In this Issue rv ge) Ha In 1640 came another clergyman, Henry a Dunster, 30, who was quickly appointed the 47 Allston: The Killer App 53 Brevia rd University Archives, H a rv

first president of Harvard College. He mar- 48 “We All Can Do Better” 55 The Undergraduate phs: (this p ried the widow Glover and moved into her 49 Havard Portrait 57 Sports a house. She died in 1643, Dunster took pos- 50 Yesterday’s News 59 Alumni l photogr session of the press, type, and paper, remar- 50 Online Evolution Accelerates 63 The View from Mass Hall a pposite, Above) Ha O Archiv ried, and moved with the printing gear and 52 A Corporation Report 64 The College Pump (

44 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Clockwise from opposite page: two views of early digs in Randall Hall; legal history by James Barr Ames, the first book to bear the Harvard University Press imprint (1913); a book on Chaucer by George Lyman Kittridge, published in 1915 and still in print in 1970; three of the hundreds of volumes in the Loeb Classical Library; a spread from Daniel Berkeley Updike’s Printing Types (1923), a popular treatise and an outstanding piece of bookmaking

the President and Fel- a glass partition overlooking the compositors. lows voted to establish (Printing and publishing would split apart a printing office to print organizationally in 1942.) In 1913, the publica- for and at the direction tion office became Harvard University Press. Church in Boston voted overwhelmingly to of the University, but sold the operation in It celebrates its centennial this year with vari- sell one of their two copies at auction to 1827. Harvard’s third printing venture came ous undertakings: fund repairs, air conditioning, and so forth. in 1872 with the establishment of a printing • The backlist lives forever. The Press Sotheby’s estimates it will fetch between $10 office and, in 1892, a publication office, both in has published more than 10,000 titles since million and $20 million.) University Hall in the Yard. They later moved its founding. Unlike commercial publish- The press moved into another building to more spacious quarters in Randall Hall, on ers, who pulp slow-selling books mere in the Yard and clattered busily, turning out the site where William James Hall stands to- months after their launch and move on to books and pamphlets and other matter for day like an immense big toe. See the presses new speculations, university presses tend to the College and for outside customers until there, above, and the composing room, oppo- keep books in print for very long periods— Harvard abandoned the effort in 1692. In 1802, site. Publication staff sat on a balcony behind estimable behavior, academic authors would

Archival photographs courtesy of the Harvard University Archives; books courtesy of Harvard Magazine 45 the Harvard University Press and Houghton Library; photographs of books by Jim Harrison Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal say. But sometimes, of course, bad things happen to good books and they go out of print. Through a partnership with the Ger- man publisher De Gruyter, HUP will bring back into print, in either e-book format or print-on-demand hardcover, all currently unavailable titles for which the press still V 302 (1-5);

has publishing rights, starting this spring. U • Interactive Emily, etc. This year will bring an open-access digital Emily Dick- V 164 (1-1) inson Archive. It will showcase her manu- U scripts and encourage the reader to study the poet’s own handwriting, word choice, and rd University Archives, H a

arrangement; read and compare transcrip- rv tions of her poetry through time; and con- ll: Ha

duct new scholarship with annotation tools. rd University Archives, H a ll Ha a rv

The digital Dictionary of American Regional nd English will enable readers to find regional treet: Hatreet: ph of Ra words they already know but also search a incy S

by definition, browse by region, and flip u hotogr P serendipitously through the dictionary 38 Q to synonyms and new, unusual words— searchable, so that one will be able to get in More or less sweet homes: (top, left and “cattywampus,” perhaps. It will also contain bytes and bits all that is important in classi- right) Randall Hall, a former dining commons, where the Press moved in 1916, a wealth of information, along with audio cal Western literature, with Greek or Latin and 38 Quincy Street, a house without of field recordings from when the original text next to English translations. electricity, where staff moved in 1932; hardcover edition of the multivolume dic- • Exhibitionism. Books to conjure with, (bottom, left and right) in 1948, it was on tionary was compiled in the late 1960s. interesting records, correspondence with to Jewett House on Francis Avenue (now part of the Divinity School) and then in The Press will formally announce this notable authors, photographs, and ephem- 1956 to 79 Garden Street, vacated by the year details of a program to come in 2014: era worth looking at, are on display at the Gray Herbarium and renamed Kittredge the complete Houghton Library in Harvard University Press: Hall, where the Press leafs out today. Loeb Classical 100 Years of Excellence in Publishing, through Library, more April 20. Examples are shown here. Why establish a press? Back in 1912, than 500 vol- • New look. To commemorate its anni- when the found- umes, will be versary and welcome the future, the Press ing fathers were available in has enlisted the design firm Chermayeff and trying to drum up digital format, Geismar to create a logo and visual identi- enthusiasm and Counterclockwise from ty and is sending into the money for a full- upper left: the first Norton world books and publicity it fledged university Lecture (1927), by Gilbert Murray, professor of Greek at hopes are stylishly dressed press, they put to- Oxford; Willi Apel’s landmark (see page 48). With a back- gether a circular dictionary of music (1944), an ward glance, one notes that giving seven rea- enduring seller; Eleanor of during the 1920s some of sons for wanting Aquitaine (1950), the Press’s firstTimes bestseller the greatest of book design- such a thing. “One ers—Bruce Rogers, D.B. Up- was that an ade- dike, David Pottinger, and quately endowed W.A. Dwiggins, variously publication center associated with the Print- would add greatly ing Office—laid hands on to Harvard’s repu- The Press launched the Press’s output. tation for scholar- this monumental series, in coopera- • Celebrations. There’s ship,” the late Max tion with the a birthday website with Hall, NF ’50, HUP’s Massachusetts candles one may visit, one-time editor for Historical Society, www.hupcentennial.com, the social sciences, in 1961. and when the American related in his 1986 book Harvard University Association of University Press: A History. “Another was that it would Presses meets in Boston in contribute materially to the advancement June, there will be learned of knowledge....The authors strongly made parties. the point that a learned press ‘would not

46 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

be in any sense a competitor to the com- in 1939, for Frank mercial publishers since its chief function Luther Mott’s Printer’s Mark would be the issuing of books that would History of Ameri- not be commercially profitable.’” can Magazines. HUP has been historically Thomas J. Wil- The first of many promiscuous with its logotype. son, the fifth di- Bancroft Prizes View diverse versions through rector of the Press, for books about time, including the crisp served from 1947 diplomacy or the centennial identity (right), at to 1967 and raised history of the www.harvardmag.com/extras. the prestige of Americas came the organization in 1951 for Arthur at Harvard and N. Holcombe’s Our More Perfect Union: From the history of American civilization, due in in the publishing Eighteenth-Century Principles to Twentieth-Century March; the first English translation of Albert world. He uttered Practice. Now and then, an actual bestseller Camus’s Algerian Chronicles, coming in May; a mission state- slips onto the list, bringing a change of pace and in the fall Martha Nussbaum’s Political ment famous in and elation to the Press staff. The first of Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. his profession: “A these was Amy Kelly’s Eleanor of Aquitaine and Naturally, the Press has had its good university press the Four Kings, 1950. days and bad. In his history of the place, exists to pub- In its centenary year, as in recent years, Max Hall summed up: “During the centu- The Press’s first lish as many good the Press will publish about 180 books, not ries since the first printing press arrived in Pulitzer Prize came in scholarly books as counting paperback reprints. It’s no pee- North America, the publishing of books by 1939 for volumes two possible short of wee enterprise. Some highlights of 2013: Harvard has taken several forms, and the and three (of five) of bankruptcy.” Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery maturing of the central publishing depart- Frank Luther Mott’s encyclopedic, The first of many and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, just out; Gish ment, even after 1913, has been a slow and readable A History of Pulitzer Prizes for Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdepen- erratic process. President Eliot founded the American Magazines. a Press book came dent Self, drawn from her Massey Lectures in Printing Office and Publication Office, and

“We All Can Do Better”

“Somewhat more than half” the students investigated for fessors to clarify what sorts of student academic misconduct on a spring 2012 final exam were “re- collaboration on work are permitted. quired…to withdraw from the College for a period of time,” FAS members were scheduled to hear rd news office news rd a

according to a message to faculty, staff, and students e-mailed some preliminary findings from Harris rv a y/h

by Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Michael D. Smith on at the faculty’s February 5 meeting. a d

February 1. As reported last August, nearly half the students in The Ad Board proceeding, focused a n the course, which had a reported enrollment of 279, were in- on student conduct, did not engage Michael D. Smith vestigated by the Administrative Board for inappropriate col- those “faculty-facing” issues—such c brooks laboration on the take-home final examination. Smith’s Febru- as the expectations course leaders establish for students, the ary update indicated that of those whose work was reviewed, structure and conduct of exams, or other pedagogical chal- more than half were required to withdraw (typically, for two to lenges. Given the enormous effort involved in hearing this large four terms, according to Ad Board regulations); of the remain- volume of individual cases, and resolving ambiguities about who der, “roughly half” were put on disciplinary probation; and the said and shared what with whom when, it is also too soon to remaining cases resulted in “no disciplinary action.” expect reflection on whether the Ad Board process itself is up “Let me be crystal clear,” Smith wrote of efforts to clarify and to resolving such involved, complex investigations in a timely secure adherence to standards of academic integrity: “we all can manner. (Because the final cases were not resolved until just be- do better.” fore the Christmas holiday, students required to withdraw were Doing so, the dean suggested, could begin with faculty discus- treated as though they had done so by September 30, lessening sion of recommendations forthcoming from the Committee on their financial obligation for fall-term tuition, room, and board Academic Integrity, chaired by dean of undergraduate education fees.) Wider discussion of such problems—essentially absent Jay M. Harris. That committee has pursued “student-facing” and during the Ad Board hearings last term—awaits faculty and stu- “faculty-facing” initiatives. The former might include “the adop- dent engagement now. tion of some form of an honor code to guide students,” and the For a fuller report on the Administrative Board proceedings latter, possibly, “recommendations regarding best practices for and Dean Smith’s message (including the full text of his e-mail properly structured and administered assessments of student and links to earlier reports on the cheating investigation), see competency,” along with already-instituted exhortations to pro- http://harvardmag.com/cheating-13.

48 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 would have founded a more fully organized university press if the financial means had harvard portrait been available. President Lowell wanted a university press, but only with misgivings did he agree to start one, because he feared that it would not be self-supporting—and it wasn’t. President Conant tried to abolish the Press because he did not think the Uni- versity should be ‘in business.’ But he failed, and the University in the second half of his administration strengthened the Press in- stead, recognizing for the first time the need for making ample funds available for work- ing capital. President Pusey had no financial worries about the Press until the very end of his tenure. Under the four- year directorship of Mark Carroll, the Press published such seminal works as John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, E.O. Wilson’s The Insect Societies, and Nota- ble American Women: 1607-1950, edited by A book offered for Edward T. James a fee in print and free and Janet W. James. online in edX, the nonprofit Harvard- It also ran large, MIT partnership for unanticipated, interactive study on and unsatisfacto- the Web rily explained defi- cits, and Carroll left his job, not quietly, in 1972. President Bok inherited a crisis during Abigail Donovan and Laura Prager which Harvard gained some additional ex- perience with academic publishing. He told The United States has more than 70 million children—and 7,500 child psychiatrists. the new Director in 1972 that he wanted the That gulf between those who might need help and those trained to give it led assistant best scholarly press and also a very profes- professors of psychiatry Laura M. Prager ’80 (right) and Abigail L. Donovan to clarify sional press and saw no reason why the two what happens to children with acute mental illness by writing Suicide by Security Blanket, purposes should interfere with each other.” and Other Stories from the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service. They draw on personal “It would be hubristic of me, I think, to experience: Prager directs that service at Massachusetts General Hospital; Donovan is assess our place in the world,” says today’s associate director of the hospital’s Acute Psychiatry Service. Their book’s 12 compos- Press director, William P. Sisler, in response ite episodes, crafted with “obsessive” care to protect privacy, bring lay and profes- to a question to that point, “but the num- sional readers into the ER “when kids come to the brink,” sharing what that’s like for ber of positive reviews we receive for our the child, physicians, and support staff. Their subjects range from children like “the books and the awards won suggest we’re whirling dervish”—“just as sick, or even more so” than peers with physical ailments— doing okay. To the best of my knowledge, to those like “the astronomer,” suffering from social deprivation, not acute psychopa- we have not been a drain on the Universi- thology. Most of the stories have no resolution, typical of emergency-room practice. ty in the last 40-some-odd years (I’ve been Donovan stresses “the complexity of these kids, their families, and the systems in which here going on 23, and can attest to that), so they live.…Each individual case needs a lot of expertise.” Prager hopes “to expose a we continue to be self-sufficient from two social evil: one reason children end up in emergency rooms is the lack of easily acces- sources, our sales and our endowment. Ob- sible outpatient care.” If we continue to “ignore the fact that children have very profound viously, both we and the University will be emotional and social difficulties,” she says, we will “end up neglecting our future: with happier if that situation continues, though kids whose difficulties weren’t addressed when maybe we could have made a difference.” it doesn’t get any easier!” With the book, she adds, “I think I can make a difference on the local and national level.” vchristopher reed

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 49 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746