Founded in 1905, Princeton University Press is a nonprofit publisher with close connections to Princeton University. The Press brings influential voices and ideas to the world stage through their academic scholarship, advancing the frontiers of scholarly knowledge and promoting the human conversation.

History of the Press

In 1905, when Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton University, Whitney Darrow, a recent graduate, managed the University’s Alumni Weekly. Because of production difficulties, Darrow saw the opportunity for an enterprising press that could assume the Weekly’s printing. Charles Scribner, a trustee of the University and publisher of the distinguished New York publishing house, Charles Scribner’s Sons, had been considering the need for a publishing company that would issue scholarly books not feasible for commercial firms. Darrow visited him in March 1905, armed with a letter of introduction and a brief proposal. Impressed by his visitor’s pluck and the plan for a press established in the service of Princeton University that would gradually assume the role of publisher, Scribner gave him a check for $1,000. Darrow raised another $4,000 on the basis of Scribner’s endorsement and bought Zapf Press, a local printing outfit. Princeton University Press thus began as a small printer in rented quarters above Marsh’s drugstore on Nassau Street in Princeton, New Jersey. Charles Scribner later gave the Press its land, its building (designed by his brother-in-law, the architect Ernest Flagg, and modeled after the Plantin Museum in Belgium), and a generous endowment.