The Michie Mouth was the employee newsletter of the Michie Company. The nineteen issues in this collection, dating from 1973 to 1994, represent a small part of the newsletter's entire run. Articles in these issues document the history of the Michie Company and its employees' experiences, including the company's purchase by ITT and later Reed Elsevier, employee awards, company events, and featured company publications.
The following collections at the University of Virginia's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library document the history of the Michie Company: MSS 8474-e Michie Broadsides and Advertisements, Broadside 1950.M444 Publication Announcements and Other Miscellaneous Items, and MSS 9891-a Papers of Thomas Johnson Michie.
There are no restrictions on access to the issues in this collection.
In 2023, W. Hamilton Bryson, the University of Richmond's Blackstone Professor of Law, donated these issues of the Michie Mouth to the Arthur J. Morris Law Library.
The Michie Publishing Company was a legal publishing firm headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. It published state statutes, treatises, and other reference works for the legal profession.
In 1897, Thomas Johnson Michie, George R. B. Michie, and Armistead R. Michie founded the Michie Publishing Company. Three years later, the Michie brothers built a new print shop and editorial office for the company on the corner of East Market and Seventh Streets in downtown Charlottesville. The company published various works in its early years, but it always specialized in legal reference materials. By the 1950s, it had narrowed its focus to serving this niche market, and was a national leader in the publication of state statutes.
The Michie Publishing Company grew through much of the twentieth century, employing over four hundred people at its height in the 1970s and 1980s. The original offices could not contain the expansion and several additions were made to the downtown building before the editorial office moved to 914 and 918 Emmet Street in 1973. The print shop later moved out of the original building in 1988.
Members of the Michie family managed the company until 1969, and sold it to the ITT Corporation in 1971. Over the next several decades the Michie Company changed hands between several larger corporations. In 1985, ITT sold it to Macmillan Publishers. Then in 1988, Macmillan sold it to Mead Data Central (Lexis-Nexis). Finally, in 1994, Reed Elsevier acquired Lexis-Nexis including its subsidiary, the Michie Company.
Under US Copyright Law, Volumes 1 through 10 of the Michie Mouth are in the public domain. The Michie Company did not publish these volumes with a copyright notice, nor did the company register them. Issues from Volume 11 and Volume 16 are protected under U.S. Copyright Law. They will enter the public domain ninety-five years after their publication. The current owner of their copyright is unknown.