Explore significant moments in HarperCollins history
Title page for Open the Door by Mabel O’Donnell, illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes, which was part of the Alice and Jerry Reading Program.
Textbook Publishing: Row, Peterson & Co.
Robert Row was a textbook author and teacher. Isaac Peterson had considerable experience as a textbook salesman as well as the willingness to risk his life savings. Together, they founded Row, Peterson & Co. by publishing Essential Studies in English, which sold at a rate of 100,000 copies a year.
More educational titles soon followed. The Free and Treadwell Primer (1910), the start of a series of elementary readers, was the first reading text to use color. The series went on to sell more than 14 million copies. Growth of a Nation became the first history text since the Civil War to sell both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line. In 1929, the company created its drama department, which served schools and amateur theater organizations by publishing hundreds of influential plays.
The company made a deal with Copp Clark Co. in 1939 to reprint and distribute readers and textbooks in Canada, and a similar arrangement with a London firm saw Row, Peterson books appear throughout the British Commonwealth. A partnership with Hiroshima Publishing Company resulted in Japanese translations of some of Row, Peterson’s most popular texts. Deals in a number of other international markets followed.
Further milestones in the publisher’s history during the 1940s included the release of the Alice and Jerry Reading Program, a set of revolutionary textbooks that sold more than 100 million copies; the creation of widely respected Basic Science Unitexts; and the innovative Row, Peterson Textfilms, which were short films designed to accompany particular textbooks. In 1951, the publisher established a dedicated college department, which included textbooks for every education level from kindergarten to college.
The merger of Row, Peterson & Co. with Harper & Brothers in 1962 created Harper & Row, which was dubbed “one of the larger, better-diversified members of the book-publishing fraternity,” according to Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly.