Tag: Championing authors

Barometer Rising

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

Stuart Little

Stuart Little
White’s beloved classic about a small mouse on a big adventure is a perennial bestseller. More

Native Son

Native Son
Wright’s unsparing reflection on what it means to be black in America. More

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

An Armed Services Edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (1943).
Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), a story about growing up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, was originally an entry for a Harper & Brothers memoir contest. More

Ursula Nordstrom

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

Doctor Zhivago

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

Bleak House

Bleak House
Dickens’s tenth novel, often considered his finest; significantly influenced the development of mystery novels. 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

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

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

J.R.R. Tolkien and the Trilogy

J. R. R. Tolkien.
Sir Stanley Unwin, chairman of British publishers George Allen & Unwin (later acquired by HarperCollins), originally rejected the 9,250-page manuscript of The Lord of the Rings, the sequel to J. R. R. Tolkien’s moderately successful (at the time) The Hobbit, as it was too long, and the author would make a deal with the publisher only if they also agreed to take another of his unfinished books. More

Herman Melville and Moby-Dick

The original agreement between Herman Melville and Harper & Brothers for Moby-Dick, dated September 12, 1851.
Harper & Brothers turned down Herman Melville’s first book, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, and it was released to strong sales by another publisher. More

Social Change: Women Writers

Author Catharine M. Sedgwick (1832).
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

The Giving Tree

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Poignant, game-changing picture book for readers of all ages that has been a favorite for generations. More