Tag: Harper & Brothers

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

Stuart Little

Stuart Little
White’s beloved classic about a small mouse on a big adventure is a perennial bestseller. More

Social Change: Women Writers

Author Catharine M. Sedgwick (1832).
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

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol
Dickens’s beloved classic of the meaning of Christmas that has inspired countless adaptations. More

From Printers to Publishers

A 1923 New York Times advertisement placed by Harper & Brothers regarding its move from Franklin Square to 49 East 33rd Street in New York City.
James and John Harper began their business in 1817 primarily as printers, although they soon began to publish and sell original works. More

George Eliot

A snippet of the first installment of Middlemarch by George Eliot, which was serialized in Harper’s Weekly (December 16, 1871).
Mary Anne Evans, born in 1819, led a turbulent life that often broke with Victorian social norms. More

The Steam-Powered Press

The Adams Power Press.
For years, the Harper brothers relied on a white draft horse named Dobbin, who plodded a circular path in the basement of their offices, turning a wooden shaft that powered the Treadwell hand press two floors above, until new technology sent him out to pasture. More

Bleak House

Bleak House
Dickens’s tenth novel, often considered his finest; significantly influenced the development of mystery novels. 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

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

The Woman in White

The Woman in White
One of the earliest works of detective fiction, this story caused a sensation with readers at the time. More

Middlemarch

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