Signature Books

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See also: Mormon studies
Signature Books
Chicago Distribution Center[1]
Publication typesfiction, non-fiction, biography, history, documentary history, essays, poetry, women's studies
Nonfiction topicsMormon and Western Americana
No. of employees8
Official websitewww.signaturebooks.com

Signature Books is an American

press specializing in subjects related to Utah, Mormonism, and Western Americana. The company was founded in 1980 by George D. Smith and Scott Kenney and is based in Salt Lake City
, Utah. It is majority owned by the Smith-Pettit Foundation.

History

In the late 1970s, Scott Kenney decided there needed to be a Mormon-related press that didn't have ties to

Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Davis Bitton, Orson Scott Card
, and Jay Parry.

In 1980 Kenny and a few investors created Signature Books. In 1981 they published their first book, the satire Saintspeak by Orson Scott Card.

Several of Signature Books' publications have won awards from the Association for Mormon Letters, the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Mormon History Association, the Mountain West Center for Western Studies, and the Utah Center for the Book.

Present

Signature Books produces from eight to ten books a year, which deal with topics of western and Mormon history, fiction, essay, humor and art. Among these are the diaries of Mormon leaders such as

a biography of thirty three of the plural wives of Joseph Smith
.

Controversy and criticism

A number of books produced by the publisher related to Mormon history have been considered controversial. Some authors view this as "quality liberal thinking on controversial LDS topics."[2] Terryl Givens states that the publisher is "the main vehicle for publications that challenge the borders of Mormon orthodoxy."[3]

Signature Books is sometimes at odds with the

polemicists?"[6]

At one point in early 1991, FARMS claims that Signature Books threatened a lawsuit over several reviews of its books that appeared in the

Review on Books of the Book of Mormon.[7] The item which initiated the lawsuit threat was a book review published by Stephen E. Robinson, on Signature-published The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture, in which Robinson blasted, "Korihor's back, and this time he's got a printing press. In its continuing assault upon traditional Mormonism, Signature Books promotes with its recent and dubiously titled work, The Word of God, ...naturalistic assumptions...in dealing with Latter-day Saint belief."[8] Signature Books asserts that several of the scholars who participated in New Approaches considered themselves active and participating members of the LDS faith. The FARMS reviewers, for their part, considered these authors to be opponents to the LDS tradition.[citation needed
] Signature management made an inquiry with the FARMS management, holding that such inferences were insulting and could be considered libelous. Signature then requested a retraction.

Daniel C. Peterson, an LDS scholar and member of FARMS, published a response in various newspapers in Utah. In his response, he stated that "Signature Books and George D. Smith seem...to have a clear (if unadmitted) agenda, an agenda that is often hostile to centrally important beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints".[9][10]

In 2004, Signature Books posted on its web site a speech given by John Hatch, in which Hatch said, "After reading the (FARMS) reviews myself, it appears to me, and is my opinion, that FARMS is interested in making Mormonism's past appear as normal as possible to readers by attacking history books that discuss complex or difficult aspects of the church's past. ... I am deeply troubled by what I see as continued efforts to attack honest scholarly work."[11][12]

Notes

  1. ^ "Publishers served by the Chicago Distribution Center". University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 2017-09-12.
  2. ^ Ostling & Ostling 2000, p. 353
  3. ^ Givens 2002, p. 296 note 123
  4. ^ Southerton 2004, pp. 148–149
  5. ^ Cobabe 2003
  6. ^ Priddis, Ron. "A Reply to FARMS and the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute". Signature Books. Archived from the original on 20 March 2015. Retrieved 2007-02-01.
  7. ^ Peterson 1992
  8. ^ Robinson 1991
  9. ^ "Fullscreen | Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship". Archived from the original on 2014-12-05. Retrieved 2014-11-30.
  10. ^ Utah County Journal, 2 August 1991; Provo Daily Herald, 12 August 1991; Salt Lake Tribune, 21 August 1991.
  11. ^ Midgley 2004
  12. ^ Hatch, John (2001). "Why I No Longer Trust the FARMS 'Review of Books'". Sunstone. Archived from the original on 6 January 2006 – via Signature Books.

References

External links
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