It is doubtless inevitable that a publishing house should celebrate an important anniversary by publishing a book. It is perhaps equally inevitable that such a book should include a description of the founding and growth of the house concerned. However, it is hoped that The University as Publisher will serve a much more useful purpose than merely to mark the Diamond Anniversary of the University of Toronto Press.

Toronto now has two sister presses, and will, we trust, soon greet several more. This volume may, therefore, be of interest to those institutions contemplating the founding of such scholarly publishing departments. It may also help to explain to some of those directly concerns with the founding of such presses, and to the general public, what university press publishing is about.

Then, too, comparatively little has been issued about publishing in Canada, and very little indeed about scholarly publishing in this country. This volume may, therefore, make a modest contribution to the economic and cultural history of the last sixty years in Canada.

It is hoped further that this account of one of the departments of the University of Toronto may be of interest to its faculty and alumni of today, and useful to its historians of tomorrow.

Eleanor Harman was the founding editor of Scholarly Publishing: A Journal for Authors and Publishers.

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