Tag: Innovation

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

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

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

New Naturalists

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

Publishing Firsts: Stereotyping

Vaults in the Harper & Brothers offices where stereotyped plates were stored (circa 1855).
The Harper brothers first began publishing in the early 1800s, when emerging technologies were fundamentally changing the process of printing–replacing the painstaking compositing, inking, and pulling processes needed for each page. 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

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

Caedmon Records and Audiobooks

Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection audiobook.
In 1952, Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney, a pair of recent college graduates, wrote a letter to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas that contained an unusual business proposal. More

James Harper, Mayor Of New York City

Official City Hall portrait of James Harper
With corruption rampant in New York City politics, the newly formed American Republican Party convinced James Harper, one of the brothers who had founded J. & J. Harper in 1817, to run for mayor. More

The HarperCollins Logo

The Harper “fire” and Collins “water” colophons, which were combined to create today’s “fire and water” HarperCollins logo.
The HarperCollins logo represents the 1990 consolidation of Harper & Row, based in New York, and Collins Publishers, based in London and Glasgow. More