Tag: Championing authors

The Birth of Perry Mason

Perry Mason author Erle Stanley Gardner pacing the floor of his study while working out a tough plot. One of his secretaries claimed Gardner sometimes paced 100 miles per book.
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

A Christmas Carol

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

A Bear Called Paddington

An early cover layout for A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond, published by Collins in 1958.
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

Journey to Jo’burg

Journey to Jo’burg
Groundbreaking book set in South Africa during the apartheid era and banned by its government. More

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

Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago
Collins was the first to publish this epic romantic drama by the Nobel Prize winner in English. More

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre
Brontë’s masterpiece of Gothic romance; a milestone title in the history of British feminist literature. More

Barometer Rising

Barometer Rising
The first novel by MacLennan, one of Canada’s most significant novelists of the mid-twentieth century. More

To Kill a Mockingbird

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

Tales of the City

Tales of the City
First book in Maupin’s acclaimed and groundbreaking series documenting San Francisco’s underground and gay culture. More