Harper (publisher)
American publishing company
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins, based in New York City. Founded in New York in 1817 by James Harper and his brother John, the company operated as J. & J. Harper until 1833, when it changed its name to Harper & Brothers, reflecting the inclusion of Joseph and Fletcher Harper. Harper began publishing Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly, and other periodicals beginning in the 1850s. From 1962 to 1990, the company was known as Harper & Row after its merger with Row, Peterson & Company. Harper & Row was purchased in 1987 by News Corporation and combined with William Collins, Sons, its United Kingdom counterpart, in 1990 to form HarperCollins, although the Harper name has been used in its place since 2007.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business, J. & J. Harper, in New York City in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher, joined them in the mid-1820s.
Harper & Brothers (1833–1962)
The company changed its name to "Harper & Brothers" in 1833. The headquarters of the publishing house was located at 331 Pearl Street, facing Franklin Square in Lower Manhattan near the present-day Manhattan approach to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Harper & Brothers began publishing Harper's New Monthly Magazine in New York City, in 1850.
The public source identifies “Harper (publisher)” as american publishing company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Harper, publisher and American.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3127696. VIAF identifies the subject as 123151600. The Library of Congress control number is n80051838. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1817, 1833, 1962 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harper (publisher)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.