COLUMBIA
LIBRARY
COLUMNS
 

That Patrician Publisher on
Morningside Heights

GENE R. HAWES
 

NE ageless and quite special personality in publishing
has frequented Morningside Heights from the days
when Columbia moved there in 1897 to fulfill its mani¬
fest destiny as a university. Indeed, this fellow came into being
full-blown four years before, and has served as the publishing
arm of the University ever since. As with many another pub¬
lisher, he has an odd quirk. His is absolute anonymitw He is
known only through the rubric of Columbia University Press.
He acts only through his officers and friends.

Columbia's publishing gentleman has by nature been a patri¬
cian, one devoted to good works of particular kinds, as befits a
Knickerbocker of the fine old New York family to which he
belongs. He publishes only scholarly things—books, for the
most part—that convey the urbanity as well as the insights of
university research.

As a book publisher, he has grown quite distinguished over
the years. His house now regularly stands as the third or fourth
most productive university press in the country. It stands among
the seventy-five or eighty most productive American book pub¬
lishers of all kinds, some four hundred or more. He has issued
works by prime authorities on everything under the sun, and one