Journey to Jo’burg
Groundbreaking book set in South Africa during the apartheid era and banned by its government. More
Education and Publishing
Beginning in 1830, the Harper brothers believed that the increasingly literate populace might clamor for turnkey collections. More
1978: Harper & Row publishes Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series…
Harper & Row publishes the first book in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series after it is serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle. The series highlights gay issues and becomes a cultural icon for generations of readers. More
Telegram regarding the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude
In this Western Union telegram dated September 14, 1967, from Cass Canfield Jr. (an editor at Harper) to Carmen Balcells (the agent of Gabriel García Márquez)... More
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Major nineteenth-century English novel that challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. More
1960: The Pulitzer Prize–winning To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is published…
J. B. Lippincott publishes the Pulitzer Prize–winning To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one of the most influential books on race in America, which goes on to sell more than 40 million copies. More
2000: Gao Xingjian becomes the first Chinese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature…
Gao Xingjian becomes the first Chinese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature after HarperCollins Australia publishes his novel Soul Mountain. 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
Native Son
Wright’s unsparing reflection on what it means to be black in America. More
Monster
Winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award and the Coretta Scott King Award. More
Social Change: Civil Rights
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
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
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
1927: Harper & Brothers signs Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World…
Harper & Brothers signs Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. 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
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
1943: Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is published…
Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a story about growing up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, shines a light on first- and second-generation Americans living in poverty. More
Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World
Seminal work that launched Gorbachev’s reform movement. More
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
An American classic called “one of the books of the century” by the New York Public Library. 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
Black Boy
A powerful and eloquent autobiography that has sold more than a million copies since publication. More
Down and Out in Paris and London
The first book by the author of the twentieth-century classics Animal Farm and 1984. 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
1937: Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God is published…
J. B. Lippincott publishes Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God. More
Collins Operations during WWII
Collins maintained combined office and warehouse space at Bridewell Place in London for many years, and in 1917, its new London publishing office at 48 Pall Mall was complemented by printing works in Mayfair that included a state-of-the-art bindery, warehouse, and distribution center. More
Rita Williams-Garcia
My childhood reading helped to build me from the inside. More
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
While giving a talk to a group of men and women about relationships, author John Gray realized he had a hook for a new book. More