University of Chicago Press

The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1890, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States. Its first published book was Robert F. Harper's Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum. The book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900, the University of Chicago Press had published 127 books and pamphlets and 11 scholarly journals, including the current Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, and American Journal of Sociology.

For its first three years, the press was an entity discrete from the university; it was operated by the Boston publishing house D. C. Heath in conjunction with the Chicago printer R. R. Donnelley. This arrangement proved unworkable, however, and in 1894, the university officially assumed responsibility for the press.

In 1902, as part of the university, the press started working on the Decennial Publications. Composed of articles and monographs by scholars and administrators on the state of the university and its faculty's research, the Decennial Publications was a radical reorganization of the press. This allowed the press, by 1905, to begin publishing books by scholars not of the University of Chicago. A manuscript editing and proofreading department was added to the existing staff of printers and typesetters, leading, in 1906, to the first edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.

By 1931, the press was an established, leading academic publisher. Leading books of that era include Edgar J. Goodspeed's The New Testament: An American Translation (the press's first nationally successful title) and its successor, Goodspeed and J. M. Povis Smith's The Complete Bible: An American Translation; Sir William Alexander Craigie's A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, published in four volumes in 1943; John Manly and Edith Rickert's The Canterbury Tales, published in 1940; and Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations.

In 1956, the press first published paperback-bound books (including the Phoenix Books series) under its imprint. Of the press's best-known books, most date from the 1950s, including translations of the Complete Greek Tragedies and Richmond Lattimore's The Iliad of Homer. That decade also saw the first edition of A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, which has since been used by students of Biblical Greek worldwide.

In 1966, Morris Philipson began his 34-year tenure as director of the University of Chicago Press. He committed time and resources to lengthening the backlist, becoming known for assuming ambitious scholarly projects, among the largest of which was The Lisle Letters — a vast collection of 16th-century correspondence by Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, a wealth of information about every aspect of 16th-century life.

As the press's scholarly volume expanded, the press also advanced as a trade publisher. In 1992, Norman Maclean's books A River Runs Through It and Young Men and Fire were national best sellers, and A River Runs Through It was made into a film directed by and starring Robert Redford.

In 1982, Philipson was the first director of an academic press to win the Publisher Citation, one of PEN's most prestigious awards. Shortly before he retired in June 2000, Philipson received the Association of American Publishers' Curtis Benjamin Award for Creative Publishing, awarded to the person whose "creativity and leadership have left a lasting mark on American publishing."

Books Division

The Books Division of the University of Chicago Press has been publishing books for scholars, students, and general readers since 1892 and has published over 11,000 books since its founding. The Books Division has more than 6,000 books in print, including such well-known works as The Chicago Manual of Style (1906); The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), by Thomas Kuhn; A River Runs Through It (1976), by Norman Maclean; and The Road to Serfdom (1944), by F. A. Hayek. In July 2009, the press announced the Chicago Digital Editions program, which made many of the press's titles available in e-book form for sale to individuals. As of August 2016, more than 3,500 titles are available in this format. In August 2010, the press published the 16th Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style simultaneously in print and online editions. The Books Division offers a Free E-book Of The Month program, through which site visitors may provide their e-mail address and receive a link to that month's free, downloadable e-book selection.

University of Chicago Press joined The Association of American Publishers trade organization in the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit which resulted in the removal of access to over 500,000 books from global readers.

Journals Division

The Journals Division of the University of Chicago Press publishes and distributes influential scholarly publications on behalf of learned and professional societies and associations, foundations, museums, and other not-for-profit organizations. As of 2016, it publishes 81 titles in a wide range of academic disciplines including the biological and medical sciences, education, the humanities, the physical sciences, and the social sciences. All are peer-reviewed journals of original scholarship, with readerships that include scholars, scientists, and medical practitioners as well as interested, educated laypeople. Since 1974, the press has published the prestigious humanities journal Critical Inquiry. The Journals Division has been a pioneer in making scholarly and scientific journals available in electronic form in conjunction with their print editions. Electronic publishing efforts were launched in 1995; by 2004, all the journals published by the University of Chicago Press were available online. In 2013, all new journal issues were also made available to subscribers in e-book format.