Harper
& Brothers - (en)
Harper & Brothers was a prominent New York City book and magazine
publishing firm which founded Harper's Magazine.
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their
book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers,
Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them in the mid 1820s.
The company changed its name to "Harper & Brothers" in 1833.
The headquarters of the publishing house were located at 331 Pearl Street,
facing Franklin Square in Lower Manhattan (about where the Manhattan
approach to the Brooklyn Bridge lies today).
Harper & Brothers began publishing Harper's New Monthly Magazine in
1850. The brothers also published Harper's Weekly (starting in 1857) and
Harper's Bazar (starting in 1867). Harper's New Monthly Magazine
ultimately became Harper's Magazine, which is now published by the
Harper's Magazine Foundation. Harper's Weekly was absorbed by The
Independent (New York; later Boston) in 1916, which in turn merged with
The Outlook in 1928. Harper's Bazar was sold to William Randolph Hearst in
1913 and is now Bazaar, published by the Hearst Corporation.
The firm faced a financial crisis in 1899 but was rescued by the financier
J. P. Morgan. In 1900 the business passed out of the Harper family's hands.
In 1962 Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company to
become Harper & Row. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired Harper
& Row in 1987 and William Collins & Sons in 1990.
The names of these two national publishing houses (Harper & Row in the
United States and Collins in Britain) survives in the newly formed
HarperCollins, which has since expanded its international reach with
further acquisitions of formerly independent publishers.
