Vermont Historical Society

Vermont History journal

Our journal, Vermont History, is sent to members and subscribers and can be read online on this website six months after publication.

To learn more about Vermont History, please click here.

Journal submission guidelines

Publication scope

Vermont History is published twice a year by the Vermont Historical Society. The journal publishes new research and scholarship in most aspects of Vermont state and local history. The journal welcomes articles on a wide range of topics and on all time periods in Vermont's past.

• Whenever possible, articles should be based on heretofore unpublished documentary or other primary source material.
• We also publish significant new interpretations of events, ideas, individuals, and historical material directly related to Vermont's history.
• We run two occasional sections: "In Their Words," which presents historical documents, edited with a brief introduction; and "Vermont Archives and Manuscripts," reports from repositories on collections or record series of broad interest to our readers.
• We do not normally publish articles on genealogy, memoirs, or notes.
• We do not normally publish articles that have previously appeared in print in books, other journals, newspapers, newsletters, local society publications, or other formats that allow for wide distribution.
• We encourage submission of appropriate illustrations to accompany articles.

Submission guidelines

We ask that you submit two double-spaced hard copies of your manuscript to:

Editor, Vermont History
Vermont Historical Society
60 Washington Street
Barre, VT 05641-4209

You may contact us via e-mail at 802-479-8500; 802-479-8510 (fax); or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Specifications

Article lengths vary widely, but manuscripts may be up to 30pages, not including notes. We generally follow The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) and Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary in matters of styling and spelling.

• Please submit electronic files in MS-Word or RTF formats.
• When you send us a revised version of your manuscript, after our preliminary edit, please include the original, marked-up hard copy as well. We will also need three to four lines of biographical material for our "About the Contributors" page.
• Use capitals and lower case for the article title; use all capitals for your byline and subheads.
• Do not add extra spaces between paragraphs, between notes, or to set off extracts. Do not center text or justify margins. In general, keep all formatting to a minimum.
• Use two hyphens for a dash, with no space before, between, or after the hyphens.
• Add spaces between ellipsis dots (. . . rather than …). If your omission occurs after a complete sentence, you will, of course, have four periods. Do not use ellipses to introduce or end quotes. Quotations that take up more than eight lines typed the full width of the page should be indented as extracts. Shorter quotations should be run into the text.
• Use the U.S. style (July 4, 1776) for dates in the text, but the European style (4 July 1776) in citations of letters and newspapers.
• Capitalization seems to cause quite a bit of confusion. We prefer what is sometimes called a down style; we tend to lowercase more than we capitalize. When in doubt, please refer to chapter 7 of The Chicago Manual (or leave the decisions to us).
• Group all notes at the close of your manuscript-not at the bottom of pages-and title the entire section "NOTES." Use superscript numbers, indenting each endnote as a paragraph. Be sure to include a full citation for the initial mention of a work; for subsequent citations, give the author's last name and short title, or "ibid.," as appropriate. We do not allow "op. cit." or "idem." Use full page spans (234-239 rather than 234-9), omitting "p." before page numbers. See the sample notes on the reverse.

Sample notes

1 Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), 122.
2 Deborah P. Clifford, "Abby Hemenway's Road to Rome," Vermont History 63 (fall 1995): 207-208.
3 Ahlstrom, Religious History, 127.
4 Ibid., 128
5 Ernest Cassara, Hosea Ballou: The Challenge to Orthodoxy (1961; reprint, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982).

Book proposals

The Society will consider any book proposal or manuscript that addresses a significant topic in Vermont history. VHS is interested in publishing books for a general audience as well as books written for specific audiences, including students and scholars. VHS is also interested in the possibilities of electronic, web-based publishing. For more information or to submit a book proposal or manuscript, please contact:

Alan Berolzheimer
Publishing Program Director
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(802) 649-2857

Recent title: A Very Fine Appearance

A Very Fine Appearance: The Vermont Civil War Photographs of George Houghton (Winner of 2012 AASLH award!), by Donald H. Wickman, foreword by Harold Holzer.

Donald H. Wickman's stunning new book focuses on Brattleboro photographer, George Houghton, who accompanied Vermont soldiers into the field, documenting their experiences at Camp Griffin in Northern Virginia during the fall and winter of 1861-62; on the Virginia Peninsula during McClellan's campaign in the spring and summer of 1862; and along the Occoquan River during the winter and spring of 1863. With over 100 images, A Very Fine Appearance pairs photographs with excerpts from the personal diaries and letters of Vermont soldiers. An introduction by Harold Holzer provides additional context about photography during the Civil War.

Ken Burns, PBS filmmaker, commented, "This is a wonderful, intimate portrait of the war that still continues to define us."

Interview

Click here to watch an interview with Donald H. Wickman about his book on WCAX News' "Books Over Breakfast."

Click here to listen to Scott Wheeler, host of The Vermont Voice on 1490 AM radio in Derby, Vermont. Scott interviews Donald Wickman about the horrors of the Civil War.

Pictures

Click here to view a sample of pictures from the book.

Noted author, historian, and the nation's most prominent scholar on Civil War photography, William A. Frassanito says, "Never before have the extraordinary efforts of a long-obscure Civil War cameraman named George H. Houghton been so thoroughly chronicled."

Recent title: We Go As Captives

We Go As Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier, by Neil Goodwin.

The Royalton Raid of October 1780 was the last Indian raid to occur in New England. With no warning a war party of 265 Canadian Mohawks and Abenakis, led by five British and French-Canadian soldiers, materialized from the forest at dawn, took 32 prisoners, and burned the town of Royalton.