1863: Harper & Brothers takes a clear stand in favor of abolition
Harper & Brothers takes a clear stand in favor of abolition with the publication of Fanny Kemble’s Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839. More
1937: Harper & Brothers publishes This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt…
Harper & Brothers publishes This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt. More
Go Set a Watchman
This newly discovered novel from beloved author Harper Lee became the bestselling book of 2015. More
Social Change: African American Identity in the U.S.
HarperCollins has published a number of books that explore the racial identity of African Americans during periods of great social conflict. More
Geronimo Johnson
I write to unread what has been written about me in error and with malice. More
Judith Kerr: Beyond The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Collins author Judith Kerr may be best known in the UK for her classic children’s picture books The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Mog the Forgetful Cat, but she is also renowned for her powerful autobiographical novels about her childhood and young adulthood. More
1958: Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. selects Harper & Brothers to publish his memoir…
After leading the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and becoming the voice of the civil rights movement, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. selects Harper & Brothers to publish Stride Toward Freedom, his memoir about the Montgomery bus boycott. More
Amistad
HarperCollins’s Amistad Press is the oldest imprint devoted to titles for the African American market at any major New York publishing house. More
1956: Harper & Brothers publishes Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy…
Harper & Brothers publishes Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy, which wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and helps propel the young senator to the White House. More
1973: William Collins and Sons secures the rights to Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago…
William Collins and Sons secures the rights to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, an eye-opening work that exposes in startling detail the horrors of the communist regime in Russia. More
Black Boy
A powerful and eloquent autobiography that has sold more than a million copies since publication. More
1963: Maurice Sendak receives the Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are…
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is published. It is awarded the 1964 Caldecott Medal. More
1958: Collins publishes the first English translation of Doctor Zhivago…
Collins publishes the first English translation of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. More
1848: Harper & Brothers publishes the first American editions of the Brontë’s works
Harper & Brothers publishes the first American editions of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. More
1949: Harper & Brothers publishes the Pulitzer-Prize winning Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks…
Harper & Brothers publishes Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, which wins the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and makes Brooks the first African American writer to receive the award. More
1895: Mark Twain signs an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers
Mark Twain signs an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, which serializes Joan of Arc in its periodicals and publishes it as a book one year later. More
1972: Avon launches the historical romance genre…
Avon launches the historical romance genre when it publishes Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower, a historical romance with a strong female lead and sexual situations that go a step beyond the tame romances of earlier eras. More
Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt regarding a new autobiographical book
Harper editor and chairman of the board Cass Canfield sent this letter, dated April 10, 1951, to Eleanor Roosevelt... More
Education and Publishing
Beginning in 1830, the Harper brothers believed that the increasingly literate populace might clamor for turnkey collections. More
Rita Williams-Garcia
My childhood reading helped to build me from the inside. More
Publishing Firsts: The Historical Romance Genre
At the time of its publication in 1972, nothing like Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower had ever been published. More
Sympathy telegram to Coretta Scott King following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
The day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 5, 1968), Harper honorary director Cass Canfield sent this telegram... More
Social Change: Collins Gives Back
In the UK, William Collins II of Collins and Sons took up labor causes, especially child labor. More
Down and Out in Paris and London
The first book by the author of the twentieth-century classics Animal Farm and 1984. More
Native Son
Wright’s unsparing reflection on what it means to be black in America. More
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans, born in 1819, led a turbulent life that often broke with Victorian social norms. More
1938: Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection…
Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children. More