Tag: Expanding literature

Incidents of Travel in Yucatán

Illustration from Incidents of Travel in Yucatán (1843).
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

Letter from “Padington”

Letter from “Padington”
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

J. B. Lippincott

The Lippincott logo from 1937.
Born in 1813 in New Jersey, Joshua Ballinger Lippincott became a bookseller shortly after he moved to Philadelphia at age 14. More

Angus & Robertson in Australia

The Angus & Robertson bookshop in Sydney (1916).
Ten thousand miles from his homeland, Scotsman David Mackenzie Angus paid £50 to open a small bookshop on Market Street in Sydney, Australia. More

I Can Read!

December 1961 I Can Read! advertisement placed in The New Yorker.
Inspired by an occasion in which she attempted to find an appropriate book for a young boy who had just learned to read, Boston librarian Virginia Haviland telephoned her friend Ursula Nordstrom, the head of children’s publishing at Harper & Brothers. More

Amistad

The cover of the Fall 1993/Winter 1994 Amistad catalog.
HarperCollins’s Amistad Press is the oldest imprint devoted to titles for the African American market at any major New York publishing house. More

From Clerk to Chairman of the Board

An 1885 letter from Henry Hoyns to the Harper brothers requesting a raise after being promoted to the stock desk.
One summer day in 1884, Horatio Harper, grandson of founder John Harper, began talking with a bright young boy during his regular steamboat commute from Long Island to Manhattan. More

1908: Collins obtains New Zealand Post Office Box #1…

Auckland's First Sky-Scrapper. The Wyndam Street Building.
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

Zondervan

Women of the Old Testament by Abraham Kuyper, the first book published by Zondervan, circa 1933.
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

The Exorcist

The Exorcist
The first horror story to reach number one on the New York Times bestseller list. More

Social Change: Civil Rights

A page from the Fall 1937 Harper & Brothers catalog touting This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt.
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

Middlemarch

Middlemarch
Ranked number one in a 2015 BBC poll of the 100 greatest British novels. More