'''Harper's Magazine Press''' was a hardcover book publisher for the trade market, a joint venture of ''Harper's Magazine'' and Harper & Row.<ref>{{Cite news|date=18 Jan 1969|title=New Joint Venture|page=4A|work=Minneapolis Star}}</ref> It was founded in New York City in 1969 and published its last books in 1976. It published literary and commercial fiction and nonfiction, cultural analysis, poetry, and books of interest to a general audience.<ref name=":03">{{Cite news|last=Pace|first=Eric|date=13 July 1974|title=Battle of Books, Hard and Soft, Grows: Areas of Strength Commonplace Results|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/13/archives/battle-of-books-hard-and-soft-grows-areas-of-strength-commonplace.html|access-date=May 30, 2021}}</ref>
== History == In 1969, the editor-in-chief of ''Harper's Magazine'', Willie Morris, convinced John Cowles Jr., whose family had acquired both the magazine and Harper & Row, that a new imprint could benefit both entities.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Weber|first=Bruce|date=Mar 19, 2012|title=John Cowles Jr., 82, Dies; Led Minneapolis Newspapers|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/media/john-cowles-jr-82-dies-led-minneapolis-newspapers.html|access-date=May 30, 2021}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Gollob|first=Herman|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X9icXximJqoC&q=welles%20harper|title=Me and Shakespeare: Adventures with the Bard|publisher=Doubleday|year=2003|isbn=9780385498180}}</ref> He appointed Herman C. Gollob as editor-in-chief of the press.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=King|first=Larry L.|date=May 2001|title=The Book on Willie Morris|url=https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-book-on-willie-morris/|journal=Texas Monthly}}</ref> Gollob said he had "the freedom to operate almost as I pleased."<ref name=":1" /> "[I] almost feel guilty," Gollob said when the press launched, "to be hurling a few more books at the public." He had worked at Little, Brown for five years, and reminisced that, "Little, Brown once had a slogan which said, ‘Fewer and better books.’ Ain’t a bad slogan."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Donohue|first=H. E. F.|date=11 Jan 1970|title=Southerner|work=Chicago Tribune}}</ref>
In June 1969, in what was thought to be the press's first big break, it announced that "a definitive book about the motion picture career of Orson Welles," co-written by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, would be issued the next year.<ref>{{Cite news|date=12 June 1969|title=Welles' Career|page=6B|work=Minneapolis Star}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> The book was to include "extensive memos, telegrams and letters Welles wrote R.K.O. after the studio cut almost an hour out of ''The Magnificent Ambersons''," a "30-page memorandum" critiquing some of the music used in ''The Lady from Shanghai'', and transcripts of some of the "75 hours of taped interviews" the two had so far recorded. In August 1970, the book was said to be scheduled for the following summer.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Raymont|first=Henry|date=21 Aug 1970|title=Welles Putting Film Memories Into a Book With Bogdanovich|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/08/21/archives/welles-putting-film-memories-into-a-book-with-bogdanovich.html|access-date=May 30, 2021}}</ref> However, the book was not completed before the publishing house folded. It was ultimately published in 1992 by HarperCollins.<ref name=":1" />
After Morris resigned under pressure from the magazine in the summer of 1971, Gollob also left, and went to work for Atheneum. He said, "The party—and a hell of a party it had been—was over."<ref name=":1" /> Lawrence Freundlich replaced him as editor-in-chief.<ref name=":03"/>
=== Debuts === The press was the venue for many authors' first books. That same year Gollob left, the press published the first book written by Bill Moyers, who was just beginning his work for PBS. Under Freundlich, it published the first books of and Fred Feldkamp, Phyllis Feldkamp, Philip J. Hilts, Mark Lipman, Lev Navrozov, Richard Selzer, Nancy Hunter Steiner, Richard Shulman, Ferris Urbanowski, and Min S. Yee.
The press published Marcella Hazan’s debut, ''The Classic Italian Cookbook'', in 1973. Julia Child recommended it, referring to its author as "my mentor in all things Italian."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Child|first=Julia|date=9 June 1977|title=Painless Rice for Can't-Do Crowd|work=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> The book sold poorly and Hazan, feeling it was mishandled, took it to a different publisher.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hazan|first=Marcella|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qC1inhfyrCMC&q=%22harper%27s%20magazine%20press%22|title=Amarcord: Marcella Remembers|publisher=Gotham Books|year=2008|isbn=9781592403882|location=New York|pages=141–143}}</ref> She went on to publish seven more books, shape Italian cuisine in the U.S., and win lifetime achievement awards from both the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals (2000, 2004).
In 1974, the press had its greatest critical and commercial success with another new author: Annie Dillard's ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'', which sold extraordinarily well, was made a Book of the Month Club main selection.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Smyth|first=Jeannette|date=19 May 1974|title=Annie Dillard: Southern Sibyl|newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref> Within the next year, "a public auction was held for the paperback rights, an unprecedented coup for a first book published by a small publishing house," and it won a Pulitzer Prize.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Sachs|first=Sylvia|date=19 May 1974|title=Ex-Pittsburgher Observes Nature: 'Pilgrim' Profound, Poetic, Pixie|work=The Pittsburgh Press|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/141921427/|access-date=May 30, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|last=Lindsey|first=Robert|date=November 9, 1977|title=Annie Dillard, Far From Tinker Creek|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/11/09/archives/annie-dillard-far-from-tinker-creek-annie-dillard-far-from-tinker.html|access-date=May 30, 2021}}</ref> It was regarded at the time as "an important new book by an important young writer," and has since been called "the ''Walden'' of our time."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kelleher|first=Ray|date=Winter 1998–99|title=Pilgrim at Planet Earth|journal=Notre Dame Magazine|volume=27|pages=24–26}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Freeman|first=John|date=March 10, 2016|title=Contemplating the Infinite with Annie Dillard|url=https://lithub.com/contemplating-the-infinite-with-annie-dillard|access-date=May 30, 2021|website=Literary Hub}}</ref> ''New Yorker'' editor David Remnick notes that it "is acknowledged as a classic almost universally."<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Remnick|first=David|date=April 29, 2016|title=Episode 28: Annie Dillard, Anohni's New Sound, and Torture in a Florida Prison|url=https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/episode-28-annie-dillard-anohnis-new-sound-and-torture-in-a-florida-prison|access-date=May 30, 2021|magazine=The New Yorker}}</ref>
== Partial list of books published ==
===1970===
* John W. Aldridge - ''In the Country of the'' ''Young'' (ISBN 0061202002) 1971
* Ralph W. Conant - ''The Prospects For Revolution: A Study of Riots, Civil Disobedience, and Insurrection in Contemporary America'' (LCCN 70-96016) * Willie Morris - ''Yazoo: Integration in a Deep-Southern Town'' (ISBN 0061263907) * Bill Moyers - ''Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country'' (ISBN 0061264008)
===1972===
* John W. Aldridge - ''The Devil In the Fire: Retrospective Essays on American Literature and Culture, 1951-1971'' (ISBN 0061202010) * Phyllis Feldkamp and Fred Feldkamp - ''The Good Life ... or What's Left of It: Being a Recounting of the Pleasures of the Senses that Contribute to the Enjoyment of Life in France'' (ISBN 0061224804)
===1973===
* Pierre Androuet (translated from the French by John Githens) - ''The Complete Encyclopedia of French Cheese (and Many other Continental Varieties)'' (ISBN 0061202304) * Marcella Hazan - ''The Classic Italian Cookbook'' (ISBN 9780061226489) * Arthur Simon and Paul Simon - ''The Politics of World Hunger: Grass-roots Politics and World Poverty'' (ISBN 0061277762) * Nancy Hunter Steiner - ''A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath'' (ISBN 0061278157) * Min S. Yee - ''The Melancholy History of Soledad Prison: In which a Utopian Scheme Turns Bedlam'' (ISBN 006129800X)
===1974===
* Rupert Bruce-Mitford - ''Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology: Sutton Hoo and other discoveries'' (ISBN 0061204803) * Ovid Demaris - ''Dirty Business: The Corporate-Political Money-Power Game'' (ISBN 0061219509) * Annie Dillard - ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' (ISBN 0061219800) * Philip J. Hilts - ''Behavior Mod'' (ISBN 0061227005) * Richard Selzer: ''Rituals of Surgery'' (ISBN 0061277606) * Rexford Tugwell: ''The Emerging Constitution'' (ISBN 0061282251)
===1975===
* Ovid Demaris - ''The Director: An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover'' (ISBN 0061219517) * H. Bruce Franklin: ''Back Where You Came From: A Life in the Death of the Empire'' (ISBN 0061225258) * Lev Navrozov - ''The Education of Lev Navrozov: A Life in the Closed World Once Called Russia'' (ISBN 0061264156) * Mary Richie: ''Loving Upward: A Novel'' (ISBN 0061275085) * Ferris Urbanowski, with Balaram; Charles W. Haney, photography - ''Yoga for New Parents: The Experience and the Practice'' (ISBN 0061283002)
===1976===
* Stoyan Christowe - ''The Eagle and the Stork'' (ISBN 0061215457) * Erik J. Friis (editor): ''The Scandinavian Presence in North America'' (ISBN 0061225150) * Richard Shulman: ''The Billion Dollar Bookies'' (ISBN 0061277754)
== References == {{Reflist}}
Category:1969 establishments in New York City Category:1976 disestablishments in New York (state) Category:American companies established in 1969 Category:American companies disestablished in 1976 Category:Publishing companies established in 1969 Category:Publishing companies disestablished in 1976 Press Category:Publishing companies based in New York City