Collins establishes the Collins Crime Club, which continues for six decades. Members receive quarterly newsletters that list the best new releases as selected by a panel of experts. More
In 1977, a handful of Harper & Row employees from the Religious Books Department moved from New York to San Francisco to focus on titles pertaining to mind, body, and spirit. More
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
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine launches in June, serializing Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, as well as then unknown authors Herman Melville and Mark Twain. More
In 1839, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rain forests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. More
In this photograph, Charles H. Sweeny, Editorial and Production, F. F. Appleton, publisher (center), and Margaret V. Paull, staff artist and typographer, plan the first Canadian production of Little Grey Rabbit Books. More
By 1844, Thomas Nelson’s company had grown large enough to open an office in London, under the leadership of Thomas Nelson Jr. and William Nelson. More
Harper & Row publishes the first English translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, establishing him as a leading young Latin American writer and a dominant and innovative figure on the global literary scene. More
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
Avon Books is established by New York businessman Joseph Meyers in association with Edna B. Williams. Now renowned for widely popularizing the historical romance category, the publisher originally begins with a focus on paperback reprints. More
John Gray sent 330 pages of his manuscript for Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus to his editor Susan Moldow on September 25, 1991, accompanied by this handwritten note. More