Dimensions
224 x 153 x 24mm
In 1817 four young brothers opened a printing shop in downtown Manhattan, and almost two centuries later, their small enterprise has grown into and remained one of America's leading publishers. The Harper brothers and their sons and successors created a cultural institution that has over the years published many of the works we prize as America's literary heritage.
Throughout Exman's history of Harper, we encounter anecdotes and stories about authors including Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Thackery, Thomas Hardy, Herman Melville, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Aldous Huxley, as well as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Thomas Wolfe, Thornton Wilder, and E. B. White. Here also is the story of Harper's periodicals, illustrated by artists such as Winslow Homer and said to be capable of influencing wars and affecting presidential elections.
In tracing Harper's changing fortunes-including a bankruptcy averted by J. P. Morgan (who said that to lose the house would have been a national calamity)-and its outstanding literary and editorial achievements, Eugene Exman provides a history of a long-lived and vital enterprise. It is also an inside view of the development of American letters, telling how such authors, their colorful and dynamic editors, and many others helped to shape America's literature firsthand and to direct the currents of our culture.
Bringing this lively account up to the present day will be a new introduction by Columbia scholar Jennifer Lee.
