HarperCollins

About HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a multinational trade publisher owned by News Corp and formed by merging the American house Harper & Row with the Glasgow publisher William Collins, Sons.

Its American root is J. & J. Harper, set up in New York in 1817 by the brothers James and John Harper, which became Harper & Brothers in 1833. In the nineteenth century Harper published Mark Twain, the Brontë sisters and William Makepeace Thackeray. A 1962 merger with Row, Peterson & Company created Harper & Row. The British side began in 1819, when William Collins founded his firm in Glasgow; Collins later published H. G. Wells and Agatha Christie.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought Harper & Row in 1987, completed its purchase of Collins in 1989 after holding a stake since 1981, and combined the two under the HarperCollins name. The 1990 acquisition of Unwin Hyman brought it the rights to J. R. R. Tolkien, and HarperCollins issued the British first edition of The Children of Húrin, edited by Christopher Tolkien and illustrated by Alan Lee, on 17 April 2007, with Houghton Mifflin publishing in the United States. HarperCollins was also the first publisher of Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, a 1998 Newbery Honor book.

The company has more than 120 imprints, is run from New York and London, and has been led by Brian Murray since 2008.

How to spot a HarperCollins first edition

• Harper & Brothers marked first editions with the words "First Edition" on the copyright page, a custom the firm confirmed in 1947.
• From 1912 Harper & Brothers also printed a two-letter code on the copyright page, one letter for the month and one for the year of printing (M stands for 1912).
• Where a printing line appears on the copyright page, the lowest number shows the printing, whatever order the numbers run in; a line with a 1 normally indicates a first printing.
• Book club editions are a common trap: their jackets usually carry no price on the front flap, so a priced jacket is one of the first things to check.