University of Pittsburgh Press

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The University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly publishing house and a major American university press.

The Press was established in September 1936 by University of Pittsburgh Chancellor John Gabbert Bowman. Paul Mellon committed the majority of the necessary startup funding from the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. Other contributors were the Buhl Foundation, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, and the university itself. The first director of the press was Lawrence E. Irwin, who was followed by Agnes Lynch Starrett, Frederick A. Hetzel, Peter Oresick (acting), and Cynthia Miller.

In recent decades Pitt Press is especially known for literary publishing, particularly its Pitt Poetry Series, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. One of its perennial bestselling titles is Thomas Bell's historical novel Out of This Furnace, reissued by the press in 1976.

[edit] References

• Alberts, Robert C. (1987). Pitt: The Story of the University of Pittsburgh 1787-1987. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-1150-7.
• University of Pittsburgh Press website (2006). About the University of Pittsburgh Press. Retrieved January 10, 2006.