Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Library of America

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Country of origin
  
United States

Publication types
  
Books

Founded
  
1979

Headquarters location
  
New York City

Official website
  
www.loa.org

Library of America httpsusausembassydeetextsfunddocsloalogo2gif

Headquarters
  
New York City, New York, United States

Founders
  
Jason Epstein, Daniel Aaron, Edmund Wilson

Profiles

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The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.

Contents

Overview and history

Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip Roth, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow, including the selected writings of several U.S. presidents.

The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ("La Pléiade") series published in France provided the model for the LOA, which was long a dream of the critic Edmund Wilson.

The initial publishers included American academic Daniel Aaron, Lawrence Hughes, Helen Honig Meyer, and Roger W. Straus, Jr.. The initial board of advisers included Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Coles, Irving Howe, and Eudora Welty. Officers included Richard Poirier, Jason Epstein, Daniel Aaron, and Cheryl Hurley. As of 2009, Hurley remains president of the Library of America.

The first volumes were published in 1982, ten years after Wilson's death. Besides the works of many individual writers, the series includes anthologies like Reporting World War II and (in a different format to the above illustration) Writing Los Angeles.

The publisher aims to keep classics in print permanently to preserve America's literary heritage. Although the LOA sells more than a quarter-million volumes annually, the publisher depends on individual contributions to help meet the costs of preparing, marketing and manufacturing its books.

The current Publisher of the Library of America series is Max Rudin, and Geoffrey O'Brien is Editor-in-Chief.

Research and scholarship

LOA volumes are prepared and edited by recognized scholars on the subject. Determined efforts are made to correct errors and omissions in previous editions and create a definitive version of the material. Notes on the text are normally included and the source texts properly identified.

For instance, the LOA text of Richard Wright's Native Son restored a number of passages that had been previously cut. The LOA commissioned a new translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America by Arthur Goldhammer for their edition of the text.

Each volume also includes a chronology of the author's career or significant incidents in the case of the anthology volumes.

Build and manufacture

The books are designed to last generations. Each volume in the series contains (acid-free), thin, but durable paper (allowing books with a large number of pages to remain fairly compact). The paper meets the requirements for permanence set by the American National Standards Institute. The paper will not turn yellow or become brittle. The books are bound with the grain of the paper to ensure that they open easily and lie flat without crinkling or buckling.

The binding cloth is durable woven rayon. The books are Smyth-sewn for permanence and flexibility, and each includes a ribbon marker. Each volume has an identical trim size, based on the "golden section," which the ancient Greeks considered to be the ideal proportion. Each volume contains 700 to 1600 pages.

The typeface used for each volume is Galliard, chosen for its readability and ease on the eyes.

Subscription service

The Library of America provides a subscription service. Subscribers choose an introductory set from a predetermined selection: either American literature (novels, short stories or poetry) or American history (letters, memoirs, biographies, histories). Subscribers determine how often they want to receive a new volume, anywhere from every three weeks to every six months. Subscription editions come without the distinctive black ribbon dust jackets. Instead, subscription edition volumes come in a cardboard slipcover and contain a paper insert summarizing the volume.

Special anthologies

  • Writing New York (Phillip Lopate, ed. 1998) ISBN 978-1-883011-62-8
  • American Sea Writing (Peter Neill, ed. 2000) ISBN 978-1-883011-83-3
  • Baseball (Nicholas Dawidoff, ed. 2002) ISBN 978-1-931082-09-9
  • Writing Los Angeles (David L. Ulin, ed. 2002) ISBN 978-1-931082-27-3
  • Americans in Paris (Adam Gopnik, ed. 2004) ISBN 1-931082-56-1
  • American Writers at Home (J.D. McClatchy, author, Erica Lennar, photographer 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-75-4
  • American Movie Critics (Phillip Lopate, ed. 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-92-1
  • American Religious Poems (Harold Bloom and Jesse Zuba, eds., 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-74-7
  • American Food Writing (Molly O'Neill, ed., 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-005-6; (paperback, 2009) ISBN 1-59853-041-0
  • True Crime: An American Anthology (Harold Schechter, ed., 2008) ISBN 978-1-59853-031-5
  • Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Ilan Stavans, ed., 2009) ISBN 978-1-59853-051-3
  • At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (George Kimball and John Schulian, eds., 2011) ISBN 978-1-59853-092-6
  • Into the Blue: American Writers on Aviation and Spaceflight (Joseph J. Corn ed., 2011) ISBN 978-1-59853-108-4
  • The 50 Funniest American Writers* (*according to Andy Borowitz): A Humor Anthology from Mark Twain to The Onion (Andy Borowitz ed., 2011) ISBN 978-1-59853-107-7
  • The Cool School: Writing from America’s Hip Underground (Glenn O'Brien ed., 2013) ISBN 978-1-59853-256-2

    • American poets project

  • James Agee: Selected Poems (Andrew Hudgins, editor 2008) ISBN 978-1-59853-032-2
  • American Sonnets (David Bromwich, editor 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-015-5
  • American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse (John Hollander, editor 2003) ISBN 978-1-931082-49-5
  • A. R. Ammons: Selected Poems (David Lehman, editor 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-93-8
  • John Berryman: Selected Poems (Kevin Young, editor 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-69-3
  • The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (Elizabeth Alexander, editor 2005) ISBN 978-1-931082-87-7
  • Countee Cullen: Collected Poems (Major Jackson, editor 2013 ) ISBN 978-1-59853-083-4
  • Stephen Crane: Complete Poems (Christopher Benfey, editor 2011) ISBN 978-1-59853-093-3
  • Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems (Robert Polito, editor 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-57-0
  • Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of America's First Great Popular Songs (Ken Emerson, editor 2010) ISBN 978-1-59853-070-4
  • Ira Gershwin: Selected Lyrics (Robert Kimball, editor 2009) ISBN 978-1-59853-052-0
  • Kenneth Koch: Selected Poems (Ron Padgett, editor 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-006-3
  • Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems (John Hollander, editor 2005) ISBN 978-1-931082-77-8
  • Amy Lowell: Selected Poems (Honor Moore, editor 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-70-9
  • Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems (Christopher Ricks, editor 2005) ISBN 978-1-931082-85-3
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems (J. D. McClatchy, editor 2003) ISBN 978-1-931082-35-8
  • Edgar Allan Poe: Poems and Poetics (Richard Wilbur, editor 2003) ISBN 978-1-931082-51-8
  • Poems from the Women's Movement (Honor Moore, editor 2009) ISBN 978-1-59853-042-1
  • Poets of the Civil War (J. D. McClatchy, editor 2005) ISBN 978-1-931082-76-1
  • Poets of World War II (Harvey Shapiro, editor 2003) ISBN 978-1-931082-33-4
  • Cole Porter: Selected Lyrics (Robert Kimball, editor 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-94-5
  • Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems (Edward Hirsch, editor 2005) ISBN 978-1-931082-78-5
  • Muriel Rukeyser: Selected Poems (Adrienne Rich, editor 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-58-7
  • Carl Sandburg: Selected Poems (Paul Berman, editor 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-100-8
  • Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems (Andrew Motion, editor 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-018-6
  • Karl Shapiro: Selected Poems (John Updike, editor 2003) ISBN 978-1-931082-34-1
  • Edith Wharton: Selected Poems (Louis Auchincloss, editor 2005) ISBN 978-1-931082-86-0
  • Walt Whitman: Selected Poems (Harold Bloom, editor 2003) ISBN 978-1-931082-32-7
  • John Greenleaf Whittier: Selected Poems (Brenda Wineapple, editor 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-59-4
  • William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems (Robert Pinsky, editor 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-71-6
  • Yvor Winters: Selected Poems (Thom Gunn, editor 2003) ISBN 978-1-931082-50-1
  • Louis Zukofsky: Selected Poems (Charles Bernstein, editor 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-95-2

    • Special publications

  • Isaac Bashevis Singer: An Album (Ilan Stavans, editor, 2004) ISBN 978-1-931082-64-8
  • Manny Farber, Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (Robert Polito, editor, 2009) ISBN 978-1-59853-050-6
  • John Updike, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams (2010) ISBN 978-1-59853-071-1
  • The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael (Sanford Schwartz, editor, 2011) 978-1-59853-109-1
  • Joe Brainard, The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard (Ron Padgett, ed., 2012) ISBN 978-1-59853-149-7
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (2012) ISBN 978-1-59853-165-7
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (2012) ISBN 978-1-59853-164-0
  • Red Smith, American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith (Daniel Okrent, ed., 2013) ISBN 978-1-59853-217-3
  • Football: Great Writing about the National Sport (John Schulian, editor, 2014) ISBN 978-1-59853-307-1

    • References

    Library of America Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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