Born Free

Its remarkable interaction between the author and a lion cub named Elsa enchanted generations. More

Publishing Firsts: The VendAvon

Chips, cookies, sodas–and books–from a vending machine. Avon’s entertaining comic books—western, horror, romance, war, science fiction, and gangster titles, mostly—appealed to readers of all ages from 1945 through the mid-1950s. More

Native Son

Wright’s unsparing reflection on what it means to be black in America. More

J. B. Lippincott

Born in 1813 in New Jersey, Joshua Ballinger Lippincott became a bookseller shortly after he moved to Philadelphia at age 14. More

Crime & Mystery At HarperCollins

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

Black Boy

A powerful and eloquent autobiography that has sold more than a million copies since publication. More

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), a story about growing up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, was originally an entry for a Harper & Brothers memoir contest. More

I, Robot

Asimov’s science fiction masterpiece that influenced a legion of future authors. More

How Harlequin Became Romance

When Richard H.G. Bonnycastle, a former Arctic explorer with the Hudson Bay Company, launched Harlequin Books in Winnipeg in 1948, he had little interest in building a publishing empire around romance novels. More

Charlotte’s Web

Considered a classic of children’s literature; a novel of friendship, love, life, and death. More

Doctor Zhivago

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

Sounder

Newbery Award–winning book that became an influential children’s work on race and class. More

The Birth of Perry Mason

Head of William Morrow and Company (later acquired by HarperCollins) since the death of its founder in 1931, Thayer Hobson searched widely for promising new authors, often traveling to Europe in pursuit of his next big title. More

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

I Can Read!

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

The Cat in the Hat

This iconic Dr. Seuss book is one of the bestselling children’s books of all time. More

Inventing the Western

Zane Grey and A. B. Guthrie Jr. were considered two of the foremost writers on the American West. More