Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
While giving a talk to a group of men and women about relationships, author John Gray realized he had a hook for a new book. More
HarperOne
In 1977, a handful of Harper & Row employees from the Religious Books Department moved from New York to San Francisco to focus on titles pertaining to mind, body, and spirit. More
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
One of Harper & Brothers’ most famous and influential authors was Aldous Huxley, who signed with the publisher in 1927 and published his first book, Texts and Pretexts, with them in 1932. More
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez drew on his childhood experiences in Colombia when crafting the story of the fictional Buendía family in the classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. More
William Collins
Born on the south side of Glasgow in the village of Pollokshaws in 1789, William Collins left school to work as a weaver and clerk in a local cotton mill. More
Profiles in Courage
Harper & Brothers helped groom the image of a future president when it agreed in the mid-1950s to work with a young senator on a collection of biographical sketches about courageous American lawmakers. More
Collins Reference and Education
William Collins spent his earliest years teaching before starting his publishing venture in 1819. More
The Growth of Harlequin Romance
Lawrence Heisey, a former soap salesman who had been appointed president of Harlequin in 1971, revolutionized romance publishing by distributing Harlequin romances to supermarkets and department stores, where they would be right at the fingertips of Canadian and American homemakers. More
Caedmon Records and Audiobooks
In 1952, Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney, a pair of recent college graduates, wrote a letter to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas that contained an unusual business proposal. More
How Harlequin Became Romance
When Richard H.G. Bonnycastle, a former Arctic explorer with the Hudson Bay Company, launched Harlequin Books in Winnipeg in 1948, he had little interest in building a publishing empire around romance novels. More
George R. R. Martin
It was in 1993 that George R. R. Martin–already an acclaimed author of science fiction and horror novels, and well known for his work in Hollywood as a screenwriter on The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast–decided he needed a broader outlet for his creativity and conceived of A Song of Ice and Fire, a truly monumental fantasy series. More
New King James Version of the Bible
In the mid-1970s Bible publisher Thomas Nelson found itself with extra capital and decided to channel these profits into the New King James Version of the Bible. More
The New International Version of the Bible
The efforts of one man in the mid-1950s brought about the publication of the New International Version of the Bible, a contemporary English translation that provided an accurate and understandable alternative to the King James Version, which had been the dominant translation for centuries. More
Zondervan
Launched during the Great Depression in the spare bedroom of a Michigan farmhouse, the publishing house of Zondervan was never a conventional religious publisher. More
Thomas Nelson: Growth
By 1844, Thomas Nelson’s company had grown large enough to open an office in London, under the leadership of Thomas Nelson Jr. and William Nelson. More
Nelson and Sons at Work
In 1845 Thomas Nelson and Sons moved its operations to a printing works at Hope Park in Scotland, big enough for its growing staff of more than 400. More
Thomas Nelson: The Beginning
In 1800, an upstart 20-year-old printer named Thomas Neilson (who later changed his name to Nelson) set off a firestorm of controversy throughout the Scottish publishing world by offering something never before seen in Great Britain: classic books produced and printed for “the common man.” More
Textbook Publishing: Row, Peterson & Co.
Robert Row was a textbook author and teacher. More
J. B. Lippincott
Born in 1813 in New Jersey, Joshua Ballinger Lippincott became a bookseller shortly after he moved to Philadelphia at age 14. More
From Clerk to Chairman of the Board
One summer day in 1884, Horatio Harper, grandson of founder John Harper, began talking with a bright young boy during his regular steamboat commute from Long Island to Manhattan. More
Eugene Exman and Martin Luther King
Shortly after the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and ‘56, Harper & Brothers religious books editor Eugene Exman left New York City for Alabama and secured a meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. More
Bernard Cornwell
Born in London in 1944, Bernard Cornwell grew up in Essex and, after a stint as a teacher, moved on to the BBC, where he took a job as a producer in Northern Ireland. More
Angus & Robertson in Australia
Ten thousand miles from his homeland, Scotsman David Mackenzie Angus paid £50 to open a small bookshop on Market Street in Sydney, Australia. More
The Birth of Perry Mason
Head of William Morrow and Company (later acquired by HarperCollins) since the death of its founder in 1931, Thayer Hobson searched widely for promising new authors, often traveling to Europe in pursuit of his next big title. More
Agatha Christie
The house of Collins acquired “Queen of Crime” Agatha Christie after she disagreed with her former publisher over the spelling of “coco”/”cocoa” in her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. More
Crime & Mystery At HarperCollins
In 1860, Harper & Brothers had paid Wilkie Collins £750 for The Woman in White, which heralded the publisher’s entry into the crime and mystery genre. More
To Kill a Mockingbird
When J. B. Lippincott (later acquired by HarperCollins) editor Therese (Tay) von Hohoff saw the first draft of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), she saw a promising story, but one in need of some reshaping and editing. More
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), a story about growing up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, was originally an entry for a Harper & Brothers memoir contest. More
Collins Operations during WWII
Collins maintained combined office and warehouse space at Bridewell Place in London for many years, and in 1917, its new London publishing office at 48 Pall Mall was complemented by printing works in Mayfair that included a state-of-the-art bindery, warehouse, and distribution center. More
Social Change: Sex in the 20th Century
In between the two world wars, Harper authors tackled the then taboo subject of sex. More
Social Change: Civil Rights
Beginning with This Is My Story (1937), Harper & Brothers published many works by Eleanor Roosevelt that promoted civil rights and the need for government action, including This I Remember (1949), On My Own (1958), and Tomorrow Is Now (1963). More
Social Change: African American Identity in the U.S.
HarperCollins has published a number of books that explore the racial identity of African Americans during periods of great social conflict. More
Social Change: Collins Gives Back
In the UK, William Collins II of Collins and Sons took up labor causes, especially child labor. More
Social Change: Thomas Nast, Illustrator
Illustrator Thomas Nast first made his name documenting the Civil War in all its gruesome reality, but he is best known for developing the political cartoon form and our modern depictions of Santa Claus. More
Social Change: The Harper Brothers and The American Civil War
Literacy became both a predictor of and influence on the American Civil War, being one of the disparities between North and South. More
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I write because I’m compelled to create and writing is the act that best satisfies the itch. More
Caroline Overington
I read to observe the world as it is seen by others; to walk the planet as strangers do; to breathe a story that is not my own. More
Tara Moss
Thanks to my parents, I’ve been a passionate reader since childhood. More
Donna Hay
I read Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer at twenty-three years old on the plane on my way to Paris, on the beginning of my first big overseas adventure. More
Bradley Trevor Greive
If not for My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell, I wouldn’t be a writer . . . mind you, I probably wouldn’t have had five treatments for rabies either. More
Nikki Gemmell
Reading is a haven, a harbor, to shelter me from the toss of the world. More
Jackie French
I write for kids because each book builds kids’ intelligence. It’s muscle-building for the brain. More
Emma Freedman
Why I read: To escape the everyday in worlds that wildly creative people invite us into, and to expand the mind. More
Social Change: Women Writers
In the mid-late 1800s, Harper & Brothers reprinted several milestone titles in the history of British feminist literature as well as the global canon, such as Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), as well as George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872). More
Ben-Hur
Lew Wallace, a Union general in the Civil War, wrote the biblical novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ in 1880. More
C.S. Lewis and Christianity
Born in 1898 in Belfast, Clive Staples Lewis lost his faith in Christianity at a young age after his mother died and he was sent away to boarding school. More
The Inklings
Clive Staples Lewis (better known as C. S. Lewis) loved nothing more than sitting in the back room of his favorite pub, The Eagle and Child, surrounded by his closest literary friends, including J. R. R. Tolkien. More
J.R.R. Tolkien and the Trilogy
Sir Stanley Unwin, chairman of British publishers George Allen & Unwin (later acquired by HarperCollins), originally rejected the 9,250-page manuscript of The Lord of the Rings, the sequel to J. R. R. Tolkien’s moderately successful (at the time) The Hobbit, as it was too long, and the author would make a deal with the publisher only if they also agreed to take another of his unfinished books. More
The Hobbit
In October 1936, Stanley Unwin, chairman of British publishers George Allen & Unwin (later acquired by HarperCollins), received a children’s book submission. More
Building Literary Identities: Canada, Australia, India
In the mid-1800s, William Collins took his UK publishing business international–from the Americas, through Australia, to Africa. More