Tag: Author relationships

Letter from Arnold Lobel regarding Frog and Toad Are Friends

This handwritten letter from Arnold Lobel to Ursula Nordstrom, head of the Harper Children’s division in the U.S., accompanied the submission of his manuscript for the now-classic Frog and Toad Are Friends. More

1958: Collins publishes the first English translation of Doctor Zhivago…

Collins publishes the first English translation of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. More

Protectors Of Authors’ Rights

In the early 1800s, American publishers were notorious for reprinting titles from overseas at a fraction of the price, and without payment to authors. More

A Woman of Substance

With her unforgettable heroine Emma Harte, Bradford popularized the rags-to-riches family saga. 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

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

1937: Harper & Brothers publishes This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt…

Harper & Brothers publishes This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt. More

Middlemarch

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

To Kill a Mockingbird

Much-loved Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, voted by librarians across America as the best novel of the twentieth century. More

1848: Harper & Brothers publishes the first American editions of the Brontë’s works

Harper & Brothers publishes the first American editions of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. More

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

One Hundred Years of Solitude

This landmark of magical realism sparked a wave of interest in Central and South American literature. 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

Letter from C. S. Lewis

In this letter to Collins publisher Billy Collins, dated November 1954, C. S. Lewis—author of The Chronicles of Narnia series, Mere Christianity, and The Screwtape Letters, among others—outlines what he sees as his three types of “literary output”: “A. Religious and General. B. Fiction. C. Academic.” More

Pushing the Boundaries of Children’s Literature

Children’s books explored uncharted territory in the mid-1960s as Harper & Row began to champion boundary-pushing children’s and young adult books. More

1943: Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is published…

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

Letter from Fred Gipson regarding Old Yeller

Old Yeller is the beloved tale of a boy and his loyal, clever, “big yeller” dog. More

Divergent

First book in the Divergent trilogy, which has sold more than 32 million copies worldwide. 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

Where the Wild Things Are

This winner of the 1964 Caldecott Medal changed the face of children’s literature. More

2015: HarperCollins expands into a global publisher…

HarperCollins expands from a primarily English-language publisher to one publishing in 17 languages, with operations in 18 countries around the world. More

Sympathy telegram to Coretta Scott King following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 5, 1968), Harper honorary director Cass Canfield sent this telegram... More

The Publisher of presidents

HarperCollins is the publisher of many United States presidents–beginning with the very first one. More

A Light in the Attic

Classic collection of poems and illustrations by Shel Silverstein; ALA Notable Children’s Book. 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

1949: Harper & Brothers publishes the Pulitzer-Prize winning Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks…

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

What Do People Do All Day?

Over 100 million Scarry books have sold worldwide; a favorite in his classic Busytown series. More