[1] The provost of SMU announced in 2011 plans to reorganize the press with a smaller budget and different goals.
The first book published by the press was Samuel Wood Greiser's Naturalists of the Frontier (1937).
[3] However, the unofficial start of the SMU Press was in 1924, when the Southwest Review was moved from Austin to Dallas.
John H. McGinnis served as the unpaid, unofficial editor-in-chief of the Southwest Review from 1927 to 1943 and played an essential role in founding the press.
From 1942 to 1945, Allen served in the Navy and then returned on January 1, 1946, as the director of the SMU Press.