Independent Publishing in America
Explore the origins of the American book trade from the late eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, with material drawn from mainstream and minority independent presses and bookstores.
Trace the changing ways books were commissioned, sold, collected, and purchased by public and private libraries, schools and state institutions, such as prisons and hospitals.
The collection features archival records of bookstores, printers, sellers, the independent Black-owned press, Lotus Press, and several unique collections of Indigenous North American presses.
Students and researchers can follow books as they progressed through each stage of the production process, from original proposals and the signing of contracts, through the various editing stages of manuscripts right through to press and on to the advertising and promotion of book titles.
Highlights
- The organisational records of African American press, Lotus Press, and Indigenous North American presses including Strawberry Press and Orenda Press
- The production files of fiction and poetry, including book proposals and author contracts, such as Indigenous North American authors Maurice Kenny, Robert Conley and Carol Lee Sanchez, and African American authors Houston Baker, Emanuel James and Etheridge Knight
- A collection of nineteenth-century salesman’s samples – specimen books used by subscription publisher agents to market books in advance of delivery
- Organisational records of Mathew Carey & Co., a hugely successful eighteenth-century large press that not only published some of the most renowned authors of the time, but also championed authors and readerships from minority communities
- The records of two independent bookstores, the Old Wives Tales Bookstore of San Francisco and the Aquarian Bookstore of Los Angeles, which specialised in niche literary genres of feminist and Black cultural history, respectively
Included in
Key data
Period covered
1770-1999
Source archives
- American Antiquarian Society
- California State University, Dominguez Hills
- GLBT Historical Society
- Sequoyah National Research Center, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
- Special Collections Research Center, University of Michigan
- African American publishers
- Book marketing and advertising
- Economics of book publishing
- History of the book and publishing history in America
- LGBTQ+ literature
- Women in publishing
- Book manuscripts and production files
- Broadsides
- Catalogues
- Correspondence
- Financial and administrative records
- Ledger books
- Notebooks
- Pamphlets and flyers
- Photographs
- Postcards and posters
- Printed books
- Reports
- Transcripts
- Matthew Chambers, University of Warsaw
- Melissa Jones, Georgetown University
- Kathy Liddle, University of Toronto
- Laurel Forster, University of Portsmouth
- Michael B Winship, University of Texas at Austin
- Business and Economics
- Ethnic and Indigenous Studies
- Literature
- Marketing, Advertising and Design
- North American Studies
- Sexuality and LGBTQI+ Histories
