John Harvard Library (series)

Last updated

The John Harvard Library is a series of books published since 1959 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The series consists of reprints of historically significant American writings, including historic documents, fiction, poetry, memoirs, and criticism.

History

Founded in 1959, the series bears the name of the first major benefactor of Harvard University. John Harvard (1607-1638) bequeathed half of his estate and his personal library of about 400 books to "New College," which was later named Harvard College in his honor. [1]

During the 1960s and 1970s, the John Harvard Library consisted mainly of authoritative reprints of documents from the colonial era of American history. Among the most noted of these are Bernard Bailyn's edition of Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776; Anne Bradstreet's collected works; and the Life of George Washington by Mason L. Weems. Editorial contributors to the series included historians John Hope Franklin and C. Vann Woodward, and poet Adrienne Rich.

The John Harvard Library series was dormant during the 1980s. Beginning in the late 1990s, the series began publishing works from the late 19th century as well as earlier eras.

With the fiftieth anniversary of the series in 2009, Harvard University Press released new paperback editions of four 19th-century works: The Red Badge of Courage , by Stephen Crane; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ; The Common Law, by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.; and Uncle Tom's Cabin , by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The new editions had a uniform paperback design. [2]

Related Research Articles

Allan Wesley Eckert was an American novelist and playwright who specialized in historical novels for adults and children, and was also a naturalist. His novel Incident at Hawk's Hill (1971) was initially marketed to adults and selected by Reader's Digest Condensed Books. A runner-up for the Newbery Medal, it was afterward marketed as a children's novel and adapted by Disney for a television movie known as The Boy Who Talked to Badgers (1975).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paperback</span> Book with a paper or paperboard cover

A paperback book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book collecting</span> Activity of collecting books

Book collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given collector. The love of books is bibliophilia, and someone who loves to read, admire, and a person who collects books is often called a bibliophile but can also be known as an bibliolater, meaning being overly devoted to books, or a bookman which is another term for a person who has a love of books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Eliot Morison</span> American historian and military officer (1887–1976)

Samuel Eliot Morison was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic (1930) with Henry Steele Commager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ballantine Books</span> American book publisher (1952–)

Ballantine Books is a major American book publisher that is a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Ballantine was founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. Ballantine was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains part of that company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malcolm Cowley</span> American writer (1898–1989)

Malcolm Cowley was an American writer, editor, historian, poet, and literary critic. His best known works include his first book of poetry, Blue Juniata (1929), and his memoir, Exile's Return, written as a chronicler and fellow traveller of the Lost Generation and an influential editor and talent scout at Viking Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Everyman's Library</span> Reprint series of Random House

Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon. It is currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent, who continue to publish Everyman Paperbacks.

A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yale University Press</span> University press associated with Yale

Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day and Clarence Day, grandsons of Benjamin Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New American Library</span> American publisher

The New American Library is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publishes trade and hardcover titles. It is currently an imprint of Penguin Random House; it was announced in 2015 that the imprint would publish only nonfiction titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Van Wyck Brooks</span> American literary critic, biographer and historian

Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.

Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop was an American legal philosopher and influential comparative philosopher.

Edward Mendelson is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the author or editor of several books about Auden's work, including Early Auden (1981) and Later Auden (1999). He is also the author of The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life (2006), about nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, and Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers (2015).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography</span>

This Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography consolidates numerous references to the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, including letters, manuscripts, publications, and Nachlass. For an extensive chronological list of Peirce's works, see the Chronologische Übersicht on the Schriften (Writings) page for Charles Sanders Peirce.

Eleanor Flexner was an American distinguished independent scholar and pioneer in what was to become the field of women's studies. Her much praised Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, originally published in 1959, relates women's physically courageous and politically ingenious work for the vote to other 19th- and early 20th-century social, labor, and reform movements, most importantly the push for equal education, the abolition of slavery, and temperance laws.

This bibliography of Abraham Lincoln is a comprehensive list of written and published works about or by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. In terms of primary sources containing Lincoln's letters and writings, scholars rely on The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, and others. It only includes writings by Lincoln, and omits incoming correspondence. In the six decades since Basler completed his work, some new documents written by Lincoln have been discovered. Previously, a project was underway at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln to provide "a freely accessible comprehensive electronic edition of documents written by and to Abraham Lincoln". The Papers of Abraham Lincoln completed Series I of their project The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln in 2000. They electronically launched The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, Second Edition in 2009, and published a selective print edition of this series. Attempts are still being made to transcribe documents for Series II and Series III.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stackpole Books</span>

Stackpole Books is a trade publishing company in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Edward J. Stackpole in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1930 and was moved to its current headquarters in 1993. Stackpole publishes nonfiction books in the areas of crafts, outdoors, regional and travel, military history, and military reference. The current CEO is M. David Detweiler, and the Publisher and Editorial Director is Judith Schnell.

Teng Ssu-yü was a Sinologist, bibliographer, and professor of history at Indiana University. Born in Hunan Province, China, he died in Bloomington, Indiana, after being struck by a car. Teng was trained in China in both the traditional skills of the Confucian scholar and contemporary historical attitudes and techniques. When he came to the United States in 1937, he became a member of the founding generation of American China studies. He wrote not only specialized monographs and bibliographical tools for academics but also such broad studies for introductory students as China's Response to the West.

Hyder Edward Rollins was an American scholar and English professor. He was a prolific author of articles and books on Elizabethan poetry, broadside ballads, and Romantic poets. He was an internationally recognized scholar on John Keats, and he edited the authoritative two-volume edition of Keats' letters.

Jeffrey Meyers is an American biographer, literary, art and film critic. He currently lives in Berkeley, California.

References

  1. Jennifer Tomase, "Tale of John Harvard’s surviving book," Archived 2008-07-08 at the Wayback Machine Harvard University Gazette Online, 1 November 2007
  2. Harvard University Press Publicity Blog, "The John Harvard Library, back from the grave", 21 January 2009.