Princeton University Press
Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Use American English Template:Infobox publisher
Princeton University Press is a nonprofit publisher closely affiliated with Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial support of Charles Scribner, as a printing press to serve the Princeton community in 1905.<ref name="ErectedNYT"/> Its distinctive building was constructed in 1911 on William Street in Princeton.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Its first book was a new 1912 edition of John Witherspoon's Lectures on Moral Philosophy.<ref name="HistoryPUP"/>
History
20th century
Princeton University Press was founded in 1905 by Princeton graduate and manager of the Alumni Weekly, Whitney Darrow. It began as Princeton Alumni Press, a small printing house which published the Princeton Alumni Weekly. The press received financial support from Princeton alumnus, Charles Scribner II.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Darrow and Scribner purchased the equipment and assumed the operations of two already existing local publishers, that of the Princeton Alumni Weekly and the Princeton Press. The new press printed both local newspapers, university documents, The Daily Princetonian, and later added book publishing to its activities.<ref name="Axtell">Template:Cite book</ref> Beginning as a small, for-profit printer, Princeton University Press was reincorporated as a nonprofit in 1910.<ref name="PW-79-22">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Since 1911, the press has been headquartered in a purpose-built gothic-style building designed by Ernest Flagg. The design of press's building, which was named the Scribner Building in 1965, was inspired by the Plantin-Moretus Museum, a printing museum in Antwerp, Belgium. In 1912, the Press published its first book, a new edition of Lectures on Moral Philosophy by John Witherspoon.<ref name=":0" />
Princeton University Press established a European office, in Woodstock, England, north of Oxford, in 1999, and opened an additional office, in Beijing, in early 2017.<ref name=":0" />
21st century
Princeton University 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In 2025, Princeton University Press was criticized when several members of its staff appeared in Chinese state media on an officially-sanctioned tour of sites in Xinjiang.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Major awards
Six books from Princeton University Press have won Pulitzer Prizes:
- Russia Leaves the War by George F. Kennan (1957)<ref name="Prizes1957PUP"/>
- Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War by Bray Hammond (1958)<ref name="Prizes1958PUP"/>
- Between War and Peace by Herbert Feis (1961)<ref name="Prizes1961PUP"/>
- Washington: Village and Capital by Constance McLaughlin Green (1963)<ref name="Prizes1963PUP"/>
- The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger (1965)<ref name="Prizes1965PUP"/>
- Machiavelli in Hell by Sebastian de Grazia (1989)<ref name="Prizes1990PUP"/>
Three books published by Princeton University Press have won the National Book Award:
- Russia Leaves the War by George F. Kennan (1957, National Book Award for Nonfiction)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
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- Monsieur Teste by Paul Valéry, trans. Jackson Mathews (1974, Award for Translated Literature)
- The Agony of Christianity and Essays on Faith by Miguel de Unamuno, trans. Anthony Kerrigan (1975, Award for Translated Literature)
Books from Princeton University Press have also been awarded the Bancroft Prize and the Nautilus Book Award.
Papers projects
Multi-volume historical documents projects undertaken by the press include:
- The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
- The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau
- The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (sixty-nine volumes)
- The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
- Kierkegaard's Writings
The Papers of Woodrow Wilson has been called "one of the great editorial achievements in all history."<ref name="Cooper"/>
Bollingen Series
Princeton University Press's Bollingen Series had its beginnings in the Bollingen Foundation, a 1943 project of Paul Mellon's Old Dominion Foundation. From 1945, the foundation had independent status, publishing and providing fellowships and grants in several areas of study, including archaeology, poetry, and psychology. The Bollingen Series was given to the university in 1969.
Other series
Sciences
- Annals of Mathematics Studies (Alice Chang, Phillip A. Griffiths, Assaf Naor, editors; Lillian Pierce, associate editor)
- Princeton Series in Applied Mathematics (Ingrid Daubechies, Weinan E, Jan Karel Lenstra, Endre Süli, editors)
- Princeton Series in Astrophysics (David N. Spergel, editor)
- Princeton Series in Complexity (Simon A. Levin and Steven H. Strogatz, editors)
- Princeton Series in Evolutionary Biology (H. Allen Orr, editor)
- Princeton Series in International Economics (Gene M. Grossman, editor)
- Princeton Science Library
Humanities
- Princeton Modern Greek Studies<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
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Biology
- Princeton Field Guides<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
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Selected titles
- Islamic Revival in British India by Barbara D. Metcalf (1982)
- The Ulama in Contemporary Islam by The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (2002)
- The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History, by Jill Lepore (2010)
- The Meaning of Relativity by Albert Einstein (1922)
- Atomic Energy for Military Purposes by Henry DeWolf Smyth (1945)
- How to Solve It by George Polya (1945)
- The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper (1945)
- The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (1949)
- The Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching, Bollingen Series XIX. First copyright 1950, 27th printing 1997.
- Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye (1957)
- Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty (1979)
- QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman (1985)
- The Great Contraction 1929–1933 by Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz (1963) with a new Introduction by Peter L. Bernstein (2008)
- Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle by Stephen Biddle (2004)
See also
References
<references> <ref name="ErectedNYT">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
<ref name="HistoryPUP">A History of Princeton University Press Template:Webarchive (2002)</ref>
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<ref name="Cooper">Template:Cite book </ref> </references>