HarperCollins expands from a primarily English-language publisher to one publishing in 17 languages, with operations in 18 countries around the world. More
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, published by HarperCollins in the UK, wins the Man Booker Prize. Mantel becomes the first woman ever to win the prize twice, having first won for Wolf Hall in 2009. More
Gao Xingjian becomes the first Chinese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature after HarperCollins Australia publishes his novel Soul Mountain. More
HarperCollins acquires William Morrow, mass market romance imprint Avon, independent publisher Ecco Press, and Amistad Press, the pre-eminent publisher of African-American authors. A year later Collins acquires independent press 4th Estate. More
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publishes The Downing Street Years, which recounts her eleven and a half years at London’s 10 Downing Street, the official prime minister’s residence, with HarperCollins. More
HarperCollins begins publishing operations in India, represented by Rupa & Co, a small independent publisher. In 2003, HarperCollins India enters a joint venture agreement with the Living Media group, the largest media conglomerate in India. More
John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is published and becomes one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the 1990s, launching an era of gender and relationship dialogue. More
News Corporation acquires William Collins Ltd., and brings together Collins, Harper & Row, Gower Publishing, Times Books, Bartholomew, and Angus & Robertson in a new worldwide group called Harper & Collins. More
Harper & Row publishes the first book in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series after it is serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle. The series highlights gay issues and becomes a cultural icon for generations of readers. More
Zondervan publishes the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible, a contemporary English translation that provides an accurate and understandable alternative to the King James Version. More
Thomas Nelson commissions 130 scholars, pastors, and lay Christians to create the New King James Version (NKJV) of the Bible, aiming to “retain the purity and stylistic beauty” of the original King James produced in 1611. More
William Collins and Sons secures the rights to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, an eye-opening work that exposes in startling detail the horrors of the communist regime in Russia. More
Avon launches the historical romance genre when it publishes Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower, a historical romance with a strong female lead and sexual situations that go a step beyond the tame romances of earlier eras. More
Harper & Row moves from 49 East 33rd Street, where it had been since 1923, to the new “Harper & Row” building designed by Emery Roth at 10 East 53rd Street. More
William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist becomes the first horror story to reach number one on the New York Times bestseller list and helps initiate the modern horror film movement. More
Harper & Row publishes the first English translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, establishing him as a leading young Latin American writer and a dominant and innovative figure on the global literary scene. More
The first Beginner Books by Dr. Seuss are published by Collins in the UK. This series includes The Cat in the Hat (which had been previously published by Collins in 1958 and was an immediate success) and Green Eggs and Ham.More
J. B. Lippincott publishes the Pulitzer Prize–winning To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one of the most influential books on race in America, which goes on to sell more than 40 million copies. More
After leading the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and becoming the voice of the civil rights movement, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. selects Harper & Brothers to publish Stride Toward Freedom, his memoir about the Montgomery bus boycott. More
The I Can Read! series launches with the publication of Little Bear, written by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and becomes the number one beginning reader series in the United States. More
Harper & Brothers publishes Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy, which wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and helps propel the young senator to the White House. More
Publisher George Allen & Unwin, later purchased by HarperCollins, publishes the 9,250-page manuscript of The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. More
William Collins and Sons purchases the religious publishing firm of Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., gaining the rights to the works of C. S. Lewis, including his Chronicles of Narnia fantasy books. More
Harper & Brothers publishes Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, which wins the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and makes Brooks the first African American writer to receive the award. More
Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a story about growing up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, shines a light on first- and second-generation Americans living in poverty. More
Avon Books is established by New York businessman Joseph Meyers in association with Edna B. Williams. Now renowned for widely popularizing the historical romance category, the publisher originally begins with a focus on paperback reprints. More