Tag: Author relationships

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

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

Ursula Nordstrom

When Anne Carroll Moore, the powerful and opinionated superintendent of children’s work at the New York Public Library, asked Harper & Brothers editor Ursula Nordstrom why she felt qualified to produce children’s books, Nordstrom said only this: “Well, I am a former child, and I haven’t forgotten a thing.” 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 Dispossessed

The classic utopian science fiction; winner of the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards. More

Kitten’s First Full Moon

Its brief text, large type, and luminescent pictures evoke the classic picture book era; Caldecott Medal winner. More

Dorothea Benton Frank

You’ve asked me to tell you why I write but I think the answer might be longer than the fifty or one hundred words you’ve allotted me. More

Dorothea Benton Frank

1923: The Harper Prize Novel is introduced as a competition to discover unknown authors…

The Harper Prize Novel is introduced as a competition to discover unknown authors, and receives more than 700 submissions in its first year. The first winner, The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson, is later awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel (1924). More

1886: David Angus and George Robertson form a bookselling partnership in Sydney

David Angus and George Robertson form a bookselling partnership in Sydney, going on to publish Australian authors like Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson to much acclaim and success. More

The Look of Stuart Little

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

Cigarette packet with Timothy Findley’s handwritten book proposal for Pilgrim

While at lunch with his editor, Iris Tupholme, Canadian author Timothy Findley reached into his pocket to read from a note that he had written on the inside flap of his cigarette package. More

Riders of the Purple Sage

Often called “the most popular Western novel of all time,” this classic helped shape the Western genre. More

Beezus and Ramona

Newbery Medal winner; humorous and beloved tale of the ups and downs of sisterhood. More

Candy package with Timothy Findley’s plans for his novella You Went Away

Canadian author Timothy Findley’s only novella, You Went Away (1996), was based on his parents’ marriage. More

The Fellowship of the Ring

First volume in The Lord of the Rings series, which has sold more than 100 million copies. More

A Christmas Carol

Dickens’s beloved classic of the meaning of Christmas that has inspired countless adaptations. More

Bring Up the Bodies

Winner of the Man Booker Prize and the first to win as a sequel. More

A Bear Called Paddington

In 1958, an editor at Collins named Barbara Ker Wilson received a manuscript submission about a talking bear, which she opened with “initial suspicion” —as the publisher had received many other proposals featuring humanized animals that “are invariably either whimsy-whamsy, written down, or filled with adult innuendoes.” More

Middlemarch

Ranked number one in a 2015 BBC poll of the 100 greatest British novels. More

1860: Harper & Brothers enters into the crime fiction genre

Harper & Brothers pay Wilkie Collins £750 for The Woman in White, which heralds the firm's entry into the crime fiction genre. More

1946: William Morrow establishes its first children’s imprint…

William Morrow establishes its first children’s imprint, Morrow Junior Books, and develops successful children’s author Beverly Cleary. More

Agatha Christie at her Devonshire home

Agatha Christie, known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime, is the best-selling novelist in history, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. More

Amistad

HarperCollins’s Amistad Press is the oldest imprint devoted to titles for the African American market at any major New York publishing house. More

Mere Christianity

Considered one of the most popular introductions to Christianity ever written. More

1938: Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection…

Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children. More

Original editorial correspondence regarding Joni Eareckson Tada

A diving accident in 1967 left Joni Eareckson, then seventeen, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair, without the use of her hands. More

Moby-Dick

Often called the greatest American novel of all time. More