Bulletin of Hispanic Studies Volume 100 Issue 10 is a Special Issue commemorating 100 years of the journal and the legacy of Edgar Allison Peers, the journal’s founder and one of the most influential figures in UK Hispanism. Anthony Cond, CEO of Liverpool University Press looks back on the beginning of the journal and the evolution of the Press from Peers’ time to the present.

The period in which E. Allison Peers was planning what would become the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies was one of flux at the journal’s publisher, Liverpool University Press.

At that time, the Secretary of the Press was the acclaimed literary scholar Lascelles Abercrombie, renowned as one of the Dymock Poets alongside Robert Frost and Rupert Brooke. The Assistant Secretary was Ms Doris Millet, eventually the first woman to run a university press in the UK (the second, some 48 years later, was also at Liverpool). Despite this wealth of talent, a severe lack of resources constrained the output from LUP’s small offices, situated near to the Brownlow Hill workhouse infirmary. Thomas Kelly notes in For Advancement of Learning: The University of Liverpool 1881–1981, ‘That the Press continued to exist at all during this period is astonishing. That it not only existed but managed to publish such major works is a tribute to the self-sacrificing labours of the Press Committee and staff’ (1981: 261).

Indeed, the Press in its form at the time was wound up on 25 March 1922 and registered instead as University Press of Liverpool Limited in partnership with the commercial publisher Hodder & Stoughton — an agreement that lasted until 1928.

In the context of such disruption, Peers’ decision to entrust the journal to a publisher in transition was a brave choice. It was also one which in the long run would have a significant impact on both LUP and the disciplines it serves.

For the rest of the twentieth century, Liverpool University Press remained a department of the University of Liverpool, but in the early 2000s all was once again in flux. Relocated to Cambridge Street on the fringes of the campus, LUP was restructured as a wholly-owned subsidiary company of the University. The relaunch provided a unique opportunity to reimagine the Press. In thinking what its distinctive contribution to the scholarly ecosystem could be, the Bulletin loomed large.

Following a two-year moratorium in which the Press’s future was debated, LUP published three journals and had seven frontlist books in the catalogue for calendar year 2004. At the end of the 2022–2023 academic year, the Press had published 163 new books during the year, 70 new in paperback, 102 journal issues across 43 journals, and 10 digital collections. As part of an unprecedented expansion, some fourteen of LUP’s book series have a focus on the modern languages and, by coincidence, fourteen of its journals come from that same wider field, with four particularly rooted in Hispanic Studies. In a development that would no doubt have delighted E. Allison Peers, Liverpool University Press has become arguably the leading Anglophone publisher of modern and romance languages scholarship worldwide. Peers’ distant successor as both Bulletin General Editor and Gilmour Chair of Spanish, Professor Claire Taylor, now leads the central Editorial Advisory Board of Liverpool University Press.

E. Allison Peers would have recognized that in celebrating a centenary, the focus must really be on the next 100 years. The forthcoming Bulletin of Hispanic Studies Centenary Papers will mark a milestone for BHS, but more importantly they will encourage a new generation to think about how the field of Hispanic Studies can continue to evolve. At the same time, Liverpool University Press has a looming anniversary of its own and will mark a 125th birthday in 2024 with its largest ever publishing programme.

– ANTHONY COND
Chief Executive Officer of Liverpool University Press

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Enjoyed this blog post? You might be interested in Then & Now: 125 Years of Liverpool University Press.

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