Tag: Art & Design

Garth Williams, Illustrator

Marketing flyer promoting the 1946 publication of Little Fur Family, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams.
Garth Williams was a little-known but talented young illustrator when he was commissioned by Ursula Nordstrom, head of Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls, to illustrate the classic Stuart Little by E. B. White. More

Charlotte’s Web

Charlotte’s Web
Considered a classic of children’s literature; a novel of friendship, love, life, and death. More

1903: Collins is the first to publish illustrated shilling-priced paperbacks…

Collins' Clear-type Press.
Collins is the first to publish a series of illustrated, shilling-priced pocket size classics with the introduction of Collins Illustrated Pocket Classics. Included in this series are a maroon cloth-bound David Copperfield, many other Charles Dickens favorites, Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth, George Eliot’s Adam Bede, and Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley. More

A Light in the Attic

A Light in the Attic
Classic collection of poems and illustrations by Shel Silverstein; ALA Notable Children’s Book. More

Frank Warren

The book that set a course. At The Book Thing in Baltimore I saw a man persistently searching over the used-book shelves. More
frank warren

Frank Warren

Little Bear

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik. Pictures bt Maurice Sendak. an I CAN READ book. (Cover)
The very first I Can Read! book has sold more than one million copies. More

The Look of Stuart Little

Stuart Little by E. B. White (1945).
In early 1945, Ursula Nordstrom, head of Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls was awaiting completion of E. B. White’s manuscript for a children’s story about a talking mouse, titled Stuart Little. More

The Muddleheaded Wombat

The Muddleheaded Wombat
First introduced on ABC Radio, Muddleheaded Wombat is one of Australia’s most adored children’s book characters. More

Incidents of Travel in Yucatán

Illustration from Incidents of Travel in Yucatán (1843).
In 1839, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rain forests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. More

“The Most Beautiful Printing Ever Done”

An edition of Harper’s Illuminated and New Pictorial Bible from 1846.
James Harper went to Europe in 1835 to compile a set of fairy tales for publication, and Harper & Brothers enlisted Joseph A. Adams to make 81 detailed wood-cut engravings for the collection. More

Flat Stanley

Flat Stanley
This series celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2014 and has sold more than one million copies. More

Publishing Firsts: Producing Books Electronically

The Long Short Cut by Andrew Garve (1968).
Although word-processing programs and electronic typewriters had been around since the late 1960s, Harper & Row was the first to help pioneer electronic publishing with Andrew Garve’s The Long Short Cut in 1968, which was, according to the New York Times, “the first book set into type completely by electronic composition.” More

New Naturalists

An advertisement for the New Naturalist Library.
William Collins V (known as Billy Collins) and the printers AdPrint came up with the idea of the New Naturalist Library in 1942. More