Tag: Firsts

1903: Collins is the first to publish illustrated shilling-priced paperbacks…

Collins' Clear-type Press.
Collins is the first to publish a series of illustrated, shilling-priced pocket size classics with the introduction of Collins Illustrated Pocket Classics. Included in this series are a maroon cloth-bound David Copperfield, many other Charles Dickens favorites, Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth, George Eliot’s Adam Bede, and Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley. More

Hilary Mantel

I read out of hope and avid curiosity, and in an attempt to live in other times, and inhabit bodies that are not my own. More
Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel

Publishing Firsts: Producing Books Electronically

The Long Short Cut by Andrew Garve (1968).
Although word-processing programs and electronic typewriters had been around since the late 1960s, Harper & Row was the first to help pioneer electronic publishing with Andrew Garve’s The Long Short Cut in 1968, which was, according to the New York Times, “the first book set into type completely by electronic composition.” More

Doctor Zhivago

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

Inventing the Western

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (1912).
Zane Grey and A. B. Guthrie Jr. were considered two of the foremost writers on the American West. More

Original contract for Thorn-Apple Tree

Original contract for Thorn-Apple Tree
Grace Campbell’s debut novel, Thorn-Apple Tree, was one of the earliest works of fiction written by a Canadian to be published by William Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. More

The Zondervan brothers

The Zondervan brothers
Bernie and Pat Zondervan (founders of religious publishing firm Zondervan) in their first store in Grand Rapids in 1933, shortly before they began publishing books. More

1972: Avon launches the historical romance genre…

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss Author of Shanna. The Flame and the Flower. (Cover)
Avon launches the historical romance genre when it publishes Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower, a historical romance with a strong female lead and sexual situations that go a step beyond the tame romances of earlier eras. More

Social Change: Thomas Nast, Illustrator

Illustrations by Thomas Nast.
Illustrator Thomas Nast first made his name documenting the Civil War in all its gruesome reality, but he is best known for developing the political cartoon form and our modern depictions of Santa Claus. More

A planning meeting at Collins Canada, circa 1940s

A planning meeting at Collins Canada, circa 1940s
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