The University of Toronto Press (UTP) has acquired Legas Publishing and its multilingual backlist of approximately 225 scholarly books on cultural studies, language arts, and social sciences. The catalog is specialized in Italian/Sicilian studies, semiotics, Canadian history, and cross-cultural works, with numerous titles being bilingual or translated works, coming from Italian, French, Spanish, German, Albanian, Portuguese, Sicilian, and Russian.
"I am very proud of what we have built and excited for what the future holds," said Dr. Leonard G. Sbrocchi, founder of Legas Publishing and modern languages and literatures at the University of Ottawa, in a statement. "Given the UTP Italian and Iberic series, among many other strengths, I am confident our legacy will be carried on and will reach new audiences."
The move should offer Legas, founded in 1987, a higher profile in North America, as the titles will be able to take advantage of UTP’s significant distribution network.
The deal is UTP's fourth acquisition in the past year, including Equinox Publishing's linguistics catalog, acquired this September, bringing more than twenty academic journals and hundreds of book titles to UTP; Irwin Law, a publisher of law tiles, acquired in July; and the October 2023 acquisition of several medical and health sciences journals from Dougmar Publishing Group.
“These acquisitions collectively demonstrate UTP’s ongoing investment in supporting academic scholarship and cultural works, further solidifying its role as a leader in the global publishing industry,” the publisher said in a press release.
