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
Gao Xingjian becomes the first Chinese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature after HarperCollins Australia publishes his novel Soul Mountain. More
William Collins introduces new steam presses, allowing Collins and Sons to publish Shakespeare and The Pilgrim’s Progress in affordable editions available to the masses. More
To launch the new Canadian trade paperback imprint Totem, in September 1975, Collins Canada’s head of publicity Lucinda Vardey organized the release of hot air balloons over Toronto and neighboring suburbs. More
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
The I Can Read! series launches with the publication of Little Bear, written by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and becomes the number one beginning reader series in the United States. 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
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
In this “Word of Apology” published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in January 1854, the Harper brothers address the devastating fire that ruined their New York City offices on Cliff Street in late 1853. More
The Harper brothers consistently sought ways to reach more readers with less expensive publications, and in 1850 they revolutionized the concept of the modern literary magazine with Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. More
Launched during the Great Depression in the spare bedroom of a Michigan farmhouse, the publishing house of Zondervan was never a conventional religious publisher. More
HarperCollins expands from a primarily English-language publisher to one publishing in 17 languages, with operations in 18 countries around the world. More
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
Thomas Nelson commissions 130 scholars, pastors, and lay Christians to create the New King James Version (NKJV) of the Bible, aiming to “retain the purity and stylistic beauty” of the original King James produced in 1611. More
Thomas Nelson introduces the Royal Readers and Royal School series in response to the enactment of compulsory schooling laws and increased demand for instructional books. More