J.R.R. Tolkien and the Trilogy

Sir Stanley Unwin, chairman of British publishers George Allen & Unwin (later acquired by HarperCollins), originally rejected the 9,250-page manuscript of The Lord of the Rings, the sequel to J. R. R. Tolkien’s moderately successful (at the time) The Hobbit, as it was too long, and the author would make a deal with the publisher only if they also agreed to take another of his unfinished books. More

The Stone Diaries

Winner of the 1993 Governor General’s Award (Canada) and the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. More

Middlemarch

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

The Pre-Packaged Library

The Harper brothers created collections of titles that allowed readers to amass an entire library instead of buying just a single book. More

Agatha Christie

The house of Collins acquired “Queen of Crime” Agatha Christie after she disagreed with her former publisher over the spelling of “coco”/”cocoa” in her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. More

Heaven Is for Real

The life-changing story of a boy who experiences Heaven, with 11 million copies sold. More

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

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

Doctor Zhivago

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

The Hobbit

In October 1936, Stanley Unwin, chairman of British publishers George Allen & Unwin (later acquired by HarperCollins), received a children’s book submission. 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

The Inklings

Clive Staples Lewis (better known as C. S. Lewis) loved nothing more than sitting in the back room of his favorite pub, The Eagle and Child, surrounded by his closest literary friends, including J. R. R. Tolkien. More

New Naturalists

William Collins V (known as Billy Collins) and the printers AdPrint came up with the idea of the New Naturalist Library in 1942. More

Blonde

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. More

Anthony Doerr

We are all mapmakers: We embed our memories everywhere, inscribing a private and intensely complicated latticework across the landscape. More