University of Toronto Press

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  University of Toronto Press opened its doors in 1901, but for the next decade it published nothing at all. No books, no monographs, no scholarly titles. For its first ten years, the press existed mainly to print examination papers and the annual university calendar. The question that history leaves open is why a university would wait so long to turn its press into an actual publisher. The answer involves a classics professor, a head librarian who doubled as the press's first editor, a governance overhaul borrowed from a government commission, and a printing technology that put mathematics on microfiche. By the time those threads come together, the University of Toronto Press had become the oldest and largest university press in Canada, and one of the largest on the entire continent.

• 2. From Exam Books to Scholarship

  ›

  The first scholarly work the press ever released came from a classics professor at University College, Toronto. That single volume marked the moment the press stepped beyond its original mandate of printing exam booklets. The shift was modest at first, and it took decades before the press fully committed to academic publishing. In 1933, the press absorbed the university bookstore, adding a retail dimension alongside its printing work. That move planted the seed for what would eventually become a three-division organisation spanning publishing, distribution, and retail.

• 3. The Librarian Who Shaped the Press

  ›

  Hugh Hornby Langton, the lead librarian of the University of Toronto Libraries, served as the press's first general editor. His appointment was not coincidental. The press was physically located inside the library between 1910 and 1920, and the two institutions have maintained close ties ever since. Langton's dual role as University Librarian and general editor gave the early press an intellectual anchor in the library's collections and expertise. That proximity shaped the editorial character of the press during its formative years, before a later generation of administrators redesigned its governance from the ground up.

• 4. A New Governance Model

  ›

  Sidney Earle Smith, who served as president of the University of Toronto in the late 1940s and 1950s, fundamentally changed how the press operated. He separated business affairs from editorial decisions, placing each under its own governing committee. The editorial side was handed to academic faculty. Smith modelled this structure on the standard Canadian university governance model, the framework defined by the Flavelle commission. To inform the new publishing division's policies, a committee of three men studied how American university presses ran themselves. Vincent Bladen, A. S. P. Woodhouse, and George Williams Brown, who became the press's general editor in 1951, led that study. Their findings shaped what the press published and how it chose to publish it.

• 5. Mathematics, Microfiche, and Innovation

  ›

  In 1949, the University of Toronto Press employed a novel typesetting method to produce the inaugural issues of the Canadian Journal of Mathematics. Setting mathematical notation in type was a technical problem that most printers of that era found difficult to solve cleanly. The press's willingness to develop a fresh approach for the journal signalled an appetite for technical experimentation. That tendency carried forward into 1971, when the press began printing all its books simultaneously on paper and on microfiche. Dual-format publication was not common practice at the time, and the decision positioned the press ahead of most academic publishers in offering researchers an archival format alongside the standard printed copy.

• 6. Three Divisions, Four Bookstores

  ›

  Today the press operates through three divisions: publishing, distribution, and retail. The distribution division maintains locations in both Toronto and Buffalo, New York, giving the press a cross-border footprint that serves the North American academic market. The retail division runs four bookstore locations under the University of Toronto Bookstore name. The St. George Bookstore operates out of the Koffler Student Centre in Toronto. The Mississauga Bookstore is housed in the William G. Davis Building. The Scarborough Bookstore sits in the Bladen Wing. A fourth location, the Faculty of Law Bookstore, operates out of the Jackman Law Building in Toronto. The press is also a current member of the Association of University Presses, the professional body that connects academic publishers across North America and beyond.