Cambridge University Press

• 1. Introduction

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  Cambridge University Press received its founding authority from King Henry VIII in 1534. Those letters patent made it the oldest university press in the world. Among the authors it has published are John Milton, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking. Nearly five centuries of continuous operation raise a serious question: how does one institution remain relevant across so many transformations of knowledge, technology, and politics? And what happens when a publisher built on the free exchange of ideas is pressed to suppress them?

• 2. First Words, First Books

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  John Siberch became Cambridge's first printer in 1521, decades before the university formally organized its press. Thomas Thomas took on that formal role in 1584 as the first practising University Printer. His inaugural publication was a book titled "Two Treatises of the Lord His Holie Supper."

  John Legate printed the first Cambridge Bible in 1591. By 1629, Thomas and John Buck had produced the Cambridge folio edition of the King James Bible. Cambridge was then one of only two publishers in England permitted to print both the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.

  In July 1697, the Duke of Somerset loaned the university £200 toward the printing house and press. James Halman, Registrary of the university, lent another £100 for the same purpose. For more than a century afterward, the press operated without a purpose-built home. The Pitt Building on Trumpington Street was completed in 1833, designed by Edward Blore, and became a listed building in 1950.

  George Herbert's 1633 collection The Temple included the poem "Easter Wings." Its words and lines were arranged on the page to form a visual image of the subject. Nothing else in the press's early catalogue looks quite like it.

• 3. Craft of the Press

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  In the early 1800s, the press pioneered stereotype printing, a technique that allowed successive print runs from a single typeset. Steam-powered machine presses arrived by the 1850s. In 1913, the Monotype system of hot-metal mechanised typesetting was introduced at the press.

  John Baskerville, the official printer from 1758 to 1766, was born in 1707. His Cambridge edition of the King James Bible, printed in 1763, used innovations in type, paper, ink, and the printing process itself. It was considered his masterpiece.

  Bruce Rogers, born in 1870, was appointed "printing expert" at the press in 1917 for a period of two years. Stanley Morison, born in 1889, served as typographical advisor to the press and to the Monotype Corporation from 1925 to 1954. He also became an advisor to The Times newspaper from 1929. David Kindersley, born in 1915, designed a typeface called Meliorissimo for the press's buildings, stationery, signs, and vans.

  James Murray brought to Cambridge a proposal that would eventually become the Oxford English Dictionary, but the press turned it down. Murray subsequently took the project to Oxford.

• 4. Journals and Laureates

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  The press launched its journals publishing programme in 1893 with the Journal of Physiology and then the Journal of Hygiene and Biometrika. By 1910, the press had established itself as a serious journal publisher, adding its first humanities title, Modern Language Review. The Journal of Fluid Mechanics appeared in 1956. Today the press publishes more than 420 academic journals.

  More than 170 Nobel Prize winners have had their work published by the press. The first title by a Nobel Laureate appeared in 1895: J. J. Thomson's Elements of the Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism. Thomson later won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906. The list of laureates spans physics, chemistry, economics, medicine, and literature. Named among them are Niels Bohr, Samuel Beckett, and Amartya Sen.

  In 1713, the press published the second edition of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Over the following centuries, the press expanded until its authors came from more than 100 countries and its offices operated in more than 40. Its total catalogue now exceeds 50,000 titles. Ernest Hemingway, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, is among the laureates whose work Cambridge University Press has published.

• 5. Controversies

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  In May 1940, Cambridge University Press applied to the Inland Revenue for exemption of its publishing profits from taxation. The application was refused that November on the grounds that the press traded with the outside world, beyond the primary purposes of the university. The case sat dormant for decades. In November 1975, with the press facing financial collapse, chief executive Geoffrey Cass wrote a 60-page letter to the Inland Revenue making the case again. A year later, that application was granted. Neither Cambridge nor the Inland Revenue made the decision public.

  In 2007, the press destroyed all remaining copies of a book it had published the year before. The book was Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, by Burr and Collins. A lawsuit brought by Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz had led to the destruction as part of a settlement. The book became one of the 100 most sought-after titles on Amazon.com and eBay in the United States within hours. The press also sent letters to libraries asking them to remove their copies. The American Library Association recommended that libraries in the United States keep the book available. Congressman Frank R. Wolf, writing in the New York Times Book Review on the 7th of October 2007, described it as "basically a book burning." The press defended its decision, saying it had acted responsibly as a global publisher with a duty to observe the laws of many countries.

  On the 18th of August 2017, Cambridge University Press deleted articles from The China Quarterly on its Chinese website. A Chinese import agency had instructed the press to remove the material. The deleted articles covered topics China regards as taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, the 2014 Hong Kong protests, and ethnic tensions in Xinjiang and Tibet. International protests followed. On the 21st of August 2017, Cambridge announced it would immediately repost the articles to uphold academic freedom.

  In February 2021, a forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Privatization was found to include a chapter by J. Mark Ramseyer. The chapter described Koreans murdered in the Kanto Massacre of 1923 as "gangs" that had torched buildings, planted bombs, and poisoned water supplies. The book's editors acknowledged the historical distortions. Editor Alon Harel called the inclusion of the original chapter an "innocent and very regrettable" mistake.

  In a copyright case originally filed in 2008, Cambridge sued Georgia State University over digital course readings. The case closed on the 29th of September 2020, with Georgia State University as the prevailing party.

• 6. The Digital Turn

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  Cambridge Dictionaries Online launched in 1999. In 2016, Cambridge Books Online and Cambridge Journals Online were replaced by a single platform called Cambridge Core. The new platform gave users article-level and chapter-level access to the press's content. A year after Cambridge Core launched, the press added Cambridge Core Share, which allowed users to generate links giving free access to selected journal articles.

  In 2019, the press introduced Cambridge Elements, a format for works too short for a book but too long for a journal article. Authors could have these works published within 12 weeks. That same year, the press joined with the University of Cambridge to respond to Plan S. The initiative called for all publications from publicly funded research to appear in open access journals from 2020. By 2023, more than 50 per cent of Cambridge University Press research articles were in open access mode.

  Cambridge University Press also joined the Association of American Publishers in the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit. The outcome resulted in the removal of access to over 500,000 books from readers worldwide.

• 7. Merger and the Future

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  In August 2021, with the approval of Queen Elizabeth II, Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessment to form Cambridge University Press and Assessment. The press retained an independent existence within the larger organization. Since 1698, a body known as the Syndics has governed the press; they were originally called the Curators. The Syndics comprise 18 senior members of the University of Cambridge.

  In 1989, the press acquired Eyre & Spottiswoode, a long-established publisher of Bibles and prayer books. The acquisition brought with it the ancient title of The Queen's Printer. The press now holds that role as The King's Printer. Cambridge University Press operates as a non-profit organisation within the university.

  In 1992, the press opened a bookshop at 1 Trinity Street in Cambridge. Books have been sold on that site since 1581, making it the oldest-known bookshop site in Britain.

  In 2019, the World Wildlife Fund awarded the press its highest score of Three Trees, based on its timber purchasing policy and responsible sourcing of timber. The press has committed to reaching carbon-zero on all energy-related emissions by 2048, extending its planning horizon well into its sixth century of continuous operation.