Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

About Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ) was the name used from 1970 by the American publisher founded in New York in 1919 by Alfred Harcourt and Donald Brace; the firm was bought by General Cinema in 1991 and absorbed by Houghton Mifflin in 2007.

The company began as Harcourt, Brace and Howe in New York, became Harcourt, Brace and Company in 1921 and Harcourt, Brace and World after merging with World Book Company in 1960, before taking the Jovanovich name in 1970. It was based in New York until 1982 and was last based in San Diego, California. Under the HBJ name the house published Alice Walker's The Color Purple in 1982, which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, and its list included translated authors such as Günter Grass and Umberto Eco.

General Cinema, which bought the business in 1991 for more than US$1.5 billion, renamed itself Harcourt General in 1993, when the publishing division became Harcourt Brace; it was shortened to Harcourt in 1999. Houghton Mifflin acquired Harcourt in 2007, and from 2008 the combined company traded as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

How to identify Harcourt Brace Jovanovich first editions