HarperCollins Publishers

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

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 Boys of Summer

Beloved sports classic published to immediate critical success about Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers. More

Social Change: Civil Rights

A page from the Fall 1937 Harper & Brothers catalog touting This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt.

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

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

An American classic called “one of the books of the century” by the New York Public Library. More

“A Word of Apology” from Harper & Brothers regarding the Harper fire of 1853

In this “Word of Apology” published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in January 1854, the Harper brothers address the devastating fire that ruined their New York City offices on Cliff Street in late 1853. More

Agatha Christie

The house of Collins acquired “Queen of Crime” Agatha Christie after she disagreed with her former publisher over the spelling of “coco”/”cocoa” in her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. More

T. C. Boyle

I read in the way that I breathe, as a necessity of life. More

T. C. Boyle

The Birth of Perry Mason

Perry Mason author Erle Stanley Gardner pacing the floor of his study while working out a tough plot. One of his secretaries claimed Gardner sometimes paced 100 miles per book.

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

Eugene Exman and Martin Luther King

Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr.

Shortly after the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and ‘56, Harper & Brothers religious books editor Eugene Exman left New York City for Alabama and secured a meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. More

The Rise and Fall of the Harper Rule

In the early 1800s, American printers had no qualms about pirating books from abroad and selling them at discount prices. More

Caroline Overington

I read to observe the world as it is seen by others; to walk the planet as strangers do; to breathe a story that is not my own. More

Caroline Overington

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

Shilpi Somaya Gowda

At every stage of life, since being a kid with a flashlight under the covers, reading has always been my favorite activity. More

Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Mary Karr

I read to save my life, to take communion, to enter a community of fellow sufferers and rejoicers. More

Mary Karr

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

Social Change: The Harper Brothers and The American Civil War

An illustrated cover of Harper’s Weekly just after the outbreak of the Civil War, dated July 20, 1861.

Literacy became both a predictor of and influence on the American Civil War, being one of the disparities between North and South. More

1993: Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publishes The Downing Street Years…

Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years.

Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher publishes The Downing Street Years, which recounts her eleven and a half years at London’s 10 Downing Street, the official prime minister’s residence, with HarperCollins. More