On Saving LSU Press

Bertram Wyatt-Brown is an acclaimed historian of 19th-century America, professor of history emeritus, University of Florida, and visiting scholar, Johns Hopkins University. He writes below on the value of LSU Press, now facing the possibility of major cuts, and describes the press's historic significance and its vitality up to the present.


On Saving LSU Press
Bertram Wyatt-Brown

With many other academicians in this country, particularly those in the South, I am most distressed that the LSU community is encountering fiscal difficulties that may lead to a diminution or even an abolition of the great publishing institution on LSU’s campus. I am particularly indebted to the splendid capabilities of the LSU Press under the leadership of the late director Les Phillabaum and more recently Mary Katherine Calloway and her editor, John Easterly. For over a decade and a half I was editor of the Southern Biography Series (which was launched in the 1930s), having retired from the position in November 2008. In the course of that period, we produced over 35 volumes, none of which received unfavorable reviews, some of which won literary prizes, and all of which received acclaim in the marketplace.

Authors with subjects in a variety of fields were attracted to our series because of the high quality of the press's operations. The lives of Chief Justice John Marshall and Daniel Boone, for instance, have won widespread praise and high sales. We covered distinguished figures, both male and female, white and black, and a variety of fields-journalists, Civil War and Confederate military and political leaders, attorneys, judges, reformers, physicians, governors, and clergymen—from colonial times to the recent past. The field of southern history would have been sorely diminished if these works had not been published in our series. We have just published Thomas Settles’s John Bankhead Magruder: A Military Reappraisal. I might also mention that the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures, which the University sponsors, has produced a valuable set of works. They have included such notable authors as C. Vann Woodward, David Donald, John Hope Franklin, T. Harry Williams, James M. McPherson, William E. Leuchtenburg, Drew Faust, now President of Harvard University, and many others, including myself. Some of the Fleming lecturers have won Pulitzer Prizes in history.

The Southern Biography series is only one of several highly successful aspects of the LSU Press's contribution to scholarship and sound learning. Literature and poetry are also well represented. In the areas of literature and history, fields I know best, the press holds an enviable position in the realm of academic publishing. It published Confederacy of Dunces in 1980. It won the Pulitzer for literature in 1981. The press’s reputation extends far beyond the confines of the South and has an international standing. It is not a regional or local enterprise by any means. At the same time, it should be noted that the press does offer considerable notice of the Gulf region as well as the history and literary achievements of Louisianans. Only the University of North Carolina Press and the University of Georgia Press, in my opinion, matches it in quality and significance in the field of southern studies. As it is, the press manages its funds with great care; there are no frills in its operations, and many on the staff work very hard for relatively modest financial reward. The press team is thoroughly dedicated to top-notch publishing. In addition, we in history and other parts of the humanities, have to have strong academic presses to support the publications of young, first-book authors in our faculties as they seek to rise in the profession. The LSU Press is particularly adept at attracting such promising scholars to publish under the guidance of the professional staff in Baton Rouge.

For the state of Louisiana to amputate or even obliterate the LSU Press would be most tragic and most shortsighted. Better times will come in due course, but to revive a dormant or vanished operation of this kind would be disastrous. It would take many years to regain what would be lost.

The Book Business, Down and Out

Randall Stephens

Toby Barnard's essay in the May 8th TLS, "Textual Healing—Ireland: Land of Scholars and Publisher Saints," is well worth reading. (Though the on-line version isn't up on the TLS site just yet.) Barnard considers the fortunes of Irish publishing over the last few decades and laments the 2009 demise of Four Courts Press.

In 1925 W. B. Yeats intoned: "We . . . are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country." Even with that illustrious past, Barnard notes: "only one Irish University, Cork, maintained its own press." Why? "[A]lmost from the invention of printing," writes Barnard, "ambitious Irish authors, uncertain how far their words would be spread, preferred to be published outside of Ireland. As well as authorial pride, there were financial incentives.” Turning to the present, Barnard looks at the dire impact of the economic downturn on the industry.

Reading Barnard’s bleak assessment—and his eulogy for Four Courts—I was reminded of a controversial article that appeared about a year ago in Times Higher Education: “Publish and Be Ignored.” Matthew Reisz gauged the shortcomings of British academic publishing that had led a number of “authors to sign up with U.S. and mainstream imprints.” For scholars who churn out specialist monographs, “the only realistic choice is between a British or US academic press. American books tend to be cheaper. British editors, often responsible for far more titles, may adopt a less ‘hands-on’ (or interventionist) approach. But what are the differences in terms of author experience?” The differences were great, said Reisz.

And now, stateside, dark clouds are once again appearing on the horizon. Louisiana, reeling from the financial crisis, may make big cuts to LSU Press, reports the Chronicle: “The Louisiana Legislature wants to slash funds for higher education, and that includes a proposed $40-million cut for the press’s home institution, LSU at Baton Rouge, said Bob Mann, a professor of mass communication there. He also edits a series for the press.” The University of Missouri Press cut half of its staff in the spring. Other state university presses are running behind budget and rethinking financial strategies.

I’ll still keep buying books in some vain hope that my purchases will lend a little help.

See also Ted Genoways’ post at the Virginia Quarterly Review site: “The Future of University Presses and Journals (A Manifesto)”; and Robert B. Townsend, “History and the Future of Scholarly Publishing,” Perspectives (October 2003).