Turning the pages back...

March 10, 1962

One of the first major publication efforts sponsored by Ukrainians in North America in the years after the second world war was the publication of the two-volume, English-language Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia.

On March 10, 1962, The Ukrainian Weekly ran the first announcement about the pending publication of the encyclopedia. Published by the University of Toronto for the Ukrainian National Association, the volumes were also sponsored by the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

The encyclopedia's editor-in-chief was Prof. Volodymyr Kubijovic and the original managing editor of the project was Luke Myshuha, Svoboda's editor-in-chief, and later, Svoboda Editor-in-Chief Anthony Dragan. Among the principal editors were Profs. George Shevelov and Clarence Manning of Columbia University, as well as Zenon Kuzela, George S.N. Luckyj and Alexander Ohloblyn.

The two-volume encyclopedia was a revised and updated edition of a three-volume Ukrainian-language encyclopedia that had been published in 1949 in Paris. The first volume of the Concise Encyclopedia, at 1,200 pages, was described by the University of Toronto Press as being destined to be "one of the major reference books of the 20th century" about Ukraine.

The first print run included 5,000 copies, and the first volume sold for a pre-publication price of $30 in 1962.

Source: "University of Toronto Announces Publication of Ukrainian Encyclopedia," The Ukrainian Weekly, March 10, 1962.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 12, 2000, No. 11, Vol. LXVIII

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