Tag: Harper & Brothers

Stuart Little

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

Ursula Nordstrom

Ursula Nordstrom.
When Anne Carroll Moore, the powerful and opinionated superintendent of children’s work at the New York Public Library, asked Harper & Brothers editor Ursula Nordstrom why she felt qualified to produce children’s books, Nordstrom said only this: “Well, I am a former child, and I haven’t forgotten a thing.” 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

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

Garth Williams, Illustrator

Marketing flyer promoting the 1946 publication of Little Fur Family, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams.
Garth Williams was a little-known but talented young illustrator when he was commissioned by Ursula Nordstrom, head of Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls, to illustrate the classic Stuart Little by E. B. White. More

Eugene Exman and Martin Luther King

Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr.
Shortly after the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and ‘56, Harper & Brothers religious books editor Eugene Exman left New York City for Alabama and secured a meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. More

The Pre-Packaged Library

An advertisement for the Collins Select Library of Christian Authors, which ran in The School Newspaper on January 2, 1882.
The Harper brothers created collections of titles that allowed readers to amass an entire library instead of buying just a single book. More

Protectors Of Authors’ Rights

The first installment of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens published in Harper’s Weekly.
In the early 1800s, American publishers were notorious for reprinting titles from overseas at a fraction of the price, and without payment to authors. More

Crime & Mystery At HarperCollins

The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner (William Morrow, 1933) and The Corpse in the Green Pyjamas by R. A. J. Walling (Avon Books, 1941).
In 1860, Harper & Brothers had paid Wilkie Collins £750 for The Woman in White, which heralded the publisher’s entry into the crime and mystery genre. More

Founded on Religion

The 1859 license granted to William Collins and Company, giving it permission to print the Bible.
Though a shared love of the written word inspired those who laid the foundation of HarperCollins, spreading Christian principles was a calling for them. More

A Light in the Attic

A Light in the Attic
Classic collection of poems and illustrations by Shel Silverstein; ALA Notable Children’s Book. More

Under the Volcano

Under the Volcano
A landmark of modernism, hailed as “one of the towering novels of this century” (New York Times). 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