1938: Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection…
Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children. 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
The Steam-Powered Press
For years, the Harper brothers relied on a white draft horse named Dobbin, who plodded a circular path in the basement of their offices, turning a wooden shaft that powered the Treadwell hand press two floors above, until new technology sent him out to pasture. More
The Years of Extermination
The Pulitzer Prize–winning Holocaust history, hailed as “a masterpiece” (New York Times Book Review). More
Periodicals: Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s New Monthly and Harper’s Bazaar
The Harper brothers consistently sought ways to reach more readers with less expensive publications, and in 1850 they revolutionized the concept of the modern literary magazine with Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. More
The Golden Notebook
A feminist landmark and the best-known work by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. More
Black Boy
A powerful and eloquent autobiography that has sold more than a million copies since publication. More
Frank Warren
The book that set a course. At The Book Thing in Baltimore I saw a man persistently searching over the used-book shelves. 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
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Christie’s first book to be published by William Collins; known for its startling reveal. 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
Protectors Of Authors’ Rights
In the early 1800s, American publishers were notorious for reprinting titles from overseas at a fraction of the price, and without payment to authors. More
Ben-Hur
Lew Wallace, a Union general in the Civil War, wrote the biblical novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ in 1880. More
The Making of the President 1960
This groundbreaking national bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner revolutionized the way presidential campaigns are reported. More
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
A multimillion-copy benchmark of adventure/survival nonfiction. 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
The Downing Street Years
Compelling account of Thatcher’s remarkable life in her own words. More
Freakonomics
Multimillion-copy bestseller that helped launch a wave of interest in behavioral economics and statistics. More
1830: J. & J. Harper is the first publisher to adopt stereotyping
J. & J. Harper is the first publisher to adopt the process of stereotyping, using papier-mâché molds to forge reusable metal plates of entire pages. More
Founded on Religion
Though a shared love of the written word inspired those who laid the foundation of HarperCollins, spreading Christian principles was a calling for them. 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
In Search of Excellence
Phenomenal classic bestseller that reinvented American business and sold more than 3 million copies. More
Science Fiction & Fantasy
HarperCollins’s connections to nascent science fiction and fantasy worlds began with works such as Edward Lytton Bulwer’s The Coming Race (1871), and H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) and The Invisible Man (1898). More
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
The Sheltering Sky
Bowles’s landmark literary novel, a classic work of psychological terror. More
To Kill a Mockingbird
Much-loved Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, voted by librarians across America as the best novel of the twentieth century. More
“The Most Beautiful Printing Ever Done”
James Harper went to Europe in 1835 to compile a set of fairy tales for publication, and Harper & Brothers enlisted Joseph A. Adams to make 81 detailed wood-cut engravings for the collection. More