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Library of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow, Frederick Douglass to Ursula K. Le Guin, including selected writing of several U.S. presidents. Anthologies and works containing historical documents, criticism, and journalism are also published. Library of America volumes seek to print authoritative versions of works; include extensive notes, chronologies, and other back matter; and are known for their distinctive physical appearance and characteristics.
The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ("La Pléiade") series published in France provided the model for the LOA, which was long a dream of critic and author Edmund Wilson. During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a long saga of rival literary outfits attempting to assemble and finding funding for much the same thing.
The founding of the Library of America took place in 1979, with the creation of an entity known as Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. (This remains the entity under which LOA notes, chronologies, and other auxiliary materials are copyrighted; and, officially, employees work for Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.) Publishers associated in some way with the creation include Lawrence Hughes, Helen Honig Meyer, and Roger W. Straus Jr. The initial board of advisers included Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Coles, Irving Howe, and Eudora Welty. Funding at the start came from two sources, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, in the total amount of $1.8 million.
The initial president of the new entity was the American academic Daniel Aaron, who had been a friend of Wilson's since the 1950s. The executive director was Cheryl Hurley, who had worked at the Modern Language Association. Other founding officers included the literary critic Richard Poirier, as vice president, and the publisher Jason Epstein, as treasurer. Epstein, and later Aaron and Poirier, had all been involved in the long series of proposals and discussions that led up to the creation of the Library of America. Another founder was the textual scholar G. Thomas Tanselle; he too had been involved in the discussions prior to creation, and after that he chaired the committee that was the arbiter of LOA textual policy.
"Its black dust jackets with an image of the author and a simple red, white, and blue stripe running below the author's name, rendered in a fountain-pen-like hand, help give the clothbound volumes a timeless feel"
Aaron remained in his position until 1985, and was responsible for navigating the shoals between the orthodoxies of literary criticism and a wider view of what the Library of America could publish. He was followed as president by executive director Hurley. In 2017, she retired as president and was replaced by Max Rudin, who was already the entity's publisher.
Hanna M. "Gila" Bercovitch served as founding editor, senior editor, and then editor-in-chief until her death in 1997. Upon her death, Henry Louis Gates said that "It is hard to find anyone who has been more central to institutionalizing the canon of American literature." She was followed as editor-in-chief by the poet and critic Geoffrey O'Brien. He retired in 2017, and was followed in 2018 by John Kulka, who was given the title of editorial director.
The first volumes were published in 1982, ten years after Wilson's death. They were priced moderately. The launch was accompanied by considerable amounts of publicity. Public response was in terms of sales positive from the beginning; by 1986, the non-profit was breaking even, although it accepted special grants for specific projects, such as one from the Bradley Foundation to enable the two-volume The Debate on the Constitution set. The response to the series continued to grow over time; between 1993 and 1996, the publisher's frontlist sales doubled. By 1996, the Library of America was getting two-thirds of its sales via subscription programs and one-third through bookstores. While for a long time the series only published the works of authors who had passed on, this changed in the late 1990s when Eudora Welty was published, soon to be followed by Philip Roth. Similarly, the rule that authors had to be American-born was later relaxed when Vladimir Nabokov was added to the list. While a nonprofit entity, the Library has not been immune to commercial considerations, often going further into genre works such as detective fiction and science fiction than some of its founders would have imagined.
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Library of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow, Frederick Douglass to Ursula K. Le Guin, including selected writing of several U.S. presidents. Anthologies and works containing historical documents, criticism, and journalism are also published. Library of America volumes seek to print authoritative versions of works; include extensive notes, chronologies, and other back matter; and are known for their distinctive physical appearance and characteristics.
The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ("La Pléiade") series published in France provided the model for the LOA, which was long a dream of critic and author Edmund Wilson. During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a long saga of rival literary outfits attempting to assemble and finding funding for much the same thing.
The founding of the Library of America took place in 1979, with the creation of an entity known as Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. (This remains the entity under which LOA notes, chronologies, and other auxiliary materials are copyrighted; and, officially, employees work for Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.) Publishers associated in some way with the creation include Lawrence Hughes, Helen Honig Meyer, and Roger W. Straus Jr. The initial board of advisers included Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Coles, Irving Howe, and Eudora Welty. Funding at the start came from two sources, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, in the total amount of $1.8 million.
The initial president of the new entity was the American academic Daniel Aaron, who had been a friend of Wilson's since the 1950s. The executive director was Cheryl Hurley, who had worked at the Modern Language Association. Other founding officers included the literary critic Richard Poirier, as vice president, and the publisher Jason Epstein, as treasurer. Epstein, and later Aaron and Poirier, had all been involved in the long series of proposals and discussions that led up to the creation of the Library of America. Another founder was the textual scholar G. Thomas Tanselle; he too had been involved in the discussions prior to creation, and after that he chaired the committee that was the arbiter of LOA textual policy.
"Its black dust jackets with an image of the author and a simple red, white, and blue stripe running below the author's name, rendered in a fountain-pen-like hand, help give the clothbound volumes a timeless feel"
Aaron remained in his position until 1985, and was responsible for navigating the shoals between the orthodoxies of literary criticism and a wider view of what the Library of America could publish. He was followed as president by executive director Hurley. In 2017, she retired as president and was replaced by Max Rudin, who was already the entity's publisher.
Hanna M. "Gila" Bercovitch served as founding editor, senior editor, and then editor-in-chief until her death in 1997. Upon her death, Henry Louis Gates said that "It is hard to find anyone who has been more central to institutionalizing the canon of American literature." She was followed as editor-in-chief by the poet and critic Geoffrey O'Brien. He retired in 2017, and was followed in 2018 by John Kulka, who was given the title of editorial director.
The first volumes were published in 1982, ten years after Wilson's death. They were priced moderately. The launch was accompanied by considerable amounts of publicity. Public response was in terms of sales positive from the beginning; by 1986, the non-profit was breaking even, although it accepted special grants for specific projects, such as one from the Bradley Foundation to enable the two-volume The Debate on the Constitution set. The response to the series continued to grow over time; between 1993 and 1996, the publisher's frontlist sales doubled. By 1996, the Library of America was getting two-thirds of its sales via subscription programs and one-third through bookstores. While for a long time the series only published the works of authors who had passed on, this changed in the late 1990s when Eudora Welty was published, soon to be followed by Philip Roth. Similarly, the rule that authors had to be American-born was later relaxed when Vladimir Nabokov was added to the list. While a nonprofit entity, the Library has not been immune to commercial considerations, often going further into genre works such as detective fiction and science fiction than some of its founders would have imagined.