Beacon Press

• 1. Introduction

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  Beacon Press is the publisher that put the Pentagon Papers into book form in 1971, when every other press refused the risk. This was the Senator Gravel edition, the first time the papers appeared as a book. Robert West, then president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, approved the decision to publish. West later said it brought two and a half years of harassment and intimidation from the Nixon administration. The Supreme Court then ruled, in Gravel v. United States, that the Speech or Debate Clause protected Senator Gravel and some acts of his aide. It did not protect Beacon Press. A small religious publisher had taken on a fight with the federal government that a sitting senator was shielded from. What convictions push a press to accept that kind of exposure, and what has it published since?

• 2. Religious Roots

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  The American Unitarian Association formed in 1825, three decades before Beacon carried that name. It aimed to spread its beliefs through printed tracts and books. Those beliefs covered theology, but also society and justice, an unusually broad brief for a religious publisher of that era.

  In 1854 the Press of the American Unitarian Association, as Beacon was then called, began buying and publishing books. Its output was largely religious and, in its own words, "conservative Unitarian" in viewpoint. That stance still ran well ahead of most other denominations at the time. Its authors were mostly Unitarian ministers, living or dead, American or British, overwhelmingly Caucasian and male. The books themselves were sermons, lectures, and letters, balanced by volumes of devotion, hymns, and morally uplifting tales.

  That narrow catalogue of ministers and hymnals would not stay fixed as the new century approached.

• 3. Widening the Mission

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  In the early 1900s, Samuel Eliot broadened the press's mission, adding books on ethics, sociology, and philanthropy alongside the religious titles. Strictly theological and religious works still held a leading place in what the Association published. But interest in social and moral betterment kept growing. The press began covering the era's live debates over war, peace, and arbitration. It also took up what the period called national amity and racial brotherhood.

  Beacon Press states that it seeks to "affirm and promote" a set of principles, starting with the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Those principles also include justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, and a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. They extend to the right of conscience, the democratic process, and a vision of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. The list closes with respect for the interdependent web of all existence, and the importance of literature and the arts in democratic life. Beacon Press is also a member of the Association of University Presses.

  Those commitments would soon draw in directors willing to publish authors other houses turned away.

• 4. Directors and Their Authors

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  In 1949, Beacon published American Freedom and Catholic Power. Its author, Paul Blanshard, was a socialist and secular humanist who worked as an assistant editor at The Nation. The book was critical of Catholicism, and Beacon issued several more of his books on the same subject over the following decades.

  Gobin Stair directed the press from 1962 to 1975. Under him Beacon signed a wave of new authors, among them James Baldwin, Kenneth Clark, and Andre Gorz. Herbert Marcuse, Jurgen Habermas, and Howard Zinn joined the list as well. So did Ben Bagdikian, Mary Daly, and Jean Baker Miller.

  Wendy Strothman became Beacon's director in 1983. She created the press's first advisory board, a group of scholars and publishing professionals who advised on book choices and direction. She also turned a budget deficit into a surplus. In 1995, her final year at Beacon, Strothman summarized the press's mission in her own words. She said: "We at Beacon publish the books we choose because they share a moral vision and a sense that greater understanding can influence the course of events. They are books we believe in." Helene Atwan replaced Strothman as director in 1995.

  Atwan's tenure would carry Beacon's list into new decades of titles, from poetry to sharp political argument.

• 5. Notable Titles

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  Martin Luther King Jr.'s Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? came out through Beacon in 1967 and was reissued in 2010. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning followed in 2006. Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems: Volume One, Thirst appeared in 2005 and again in a 2007 edition. James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son reached Beacon's list in 1984, decades after Baldwin himself had joined the press's roster of authors.

  Cornel West's Race Matters arrived in 2001. Geoffrey Canada's Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun and Deborah Meier's The Power of Their Ideas both appeared in 1995. The list kept expanding into the new century with Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility in 2018 and Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow's Chokepoint Capitalism in 2022.

  One name on that list would soon anchor an entire series of its own: Martin Luther King Jr.

• 6. The King Legacy

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  In 2009, Beacon Press announced a new partnership with the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. to launch a book series called The King Legacy. The program reprints King's previously published titles in new editions. It also gathers his writings, sermons, orations, lectures, and prayers into entirely new collections, each carrying fresh introductions from leading scholars.

  That partnership would keep King's own words in print for a new generation of readers.

• 7. Recognition and Reach

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  Beacon Press launched its blog, Beacon Broadside, in late September 2007. In 1992, the press won a New England Book Award for publishing. The following year, the Literary Market Place voted Beacon "Trade Publisher of the Year." Beacon Press continues today as a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association, carrying its catalogue of theology, politics, and poetry into new print runs.