Thomas Nelson’s bookshop once sat in a half-timbered storefront at 7 West Bow in Edinburgh, one of many rickety buildings rising precariously from the Z-shaped street like upside-down pyramids. More
During a time of expansion for Collins in New Zealand, the company obtains New Zealand Post Office Box #1 (which it continues to use to this day) and moves to a new building on Wyndham Street, which at eight stories high, was then Auckland’s tallest building. More
Signed with a paw print, this letter from “Padington” (circa 1966) was sent to Australian booksellers and sales staff, encouraging them to sell the latest Paddington title. More
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
HarperCollins Publishers began as J. & J. Harper, a small family printing shop run by brothers James and John Harper in New York City in March 1817. More
William Collins and Sons purchases the religious publishing firm of Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., gaining the rights to the works of C. S. Lewis, including his Chronicles of Narnia fantasy books. More
Collins becomes the publisher for the Scottish School Book Association and Irish National Schools, by 1875 buying out the Scottish School Book Association and supplying books directly to schools. More
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, published by HarperCollins in the UK, wins the Man Booker Prize. Mantel becomes the first woman ever to win the prize twice, having first won for Wolf Hall in 2009. More
William Collins and Sons secures the rights to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, an eye-opening work that exposes in startling detail the horrors of the communist regime in Russia. More
News Corporation acquires William Collins Ltd., and brings together Collins, Harper & Row, Gower Publishing, Times Books, Bartholomew, and Angus & Robertson in a new worldwide group called Harper & Collins. More
Though a shared love of the written word inspired those who laid the foundation of HarperCollins, spreading Christian principles was a calling for them. More