Harcourt (publisher)
Encyclopedia
Harcourt was a United States publishing
firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The company was based in San Diego, California
, with an Editorial / Sales / Marketing / Rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida.
In 2007, the U.S. Schools Education and Trade Publishing parts of Harcourt Education were sold by Reed Elsevier
to Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. Harcourt Assessment
and Harcourt Education International were acquired by Pearson
, the international education and information company, in January 2008.
-based World Book, Inc.
publisher of reference works) opened its first office in Manila
in 1905 and published English-language educational materials for schools in the Philippines
. The company later moved to New York
, where it became a test publisher. Much of the company's success was based on the work of Arthur S. Otis, who was best known for the intelligence tests he developed for the U.S. Army. Millions of World War I draftees took Otis's tests
.
World Book Company became the first publisher of group-administered tests measuring mental ability when it published Otis's Group Intelligence Scale in 1918. Otis became a World Book employee in 1921. By 1960, it had a portfolio of educational tests, including the Stanford Achievement Test (1923), the Metropolitan Achievement Test (1932) and the Otis Mental Ability Test (1936).
and Donald Brace
were friends at Columbia College of Columbia University
in New York, from which they both graduated in 1904. The two worked for Henry Holt & Company before founding, in 1919, their own publishing company, Harcourt, Brace & Howe. In 1921, they became Harcourt, Brace & Company. They published the works of a number of world renowned writers, including Sinclair Lewis
, Virginia Woolf
, T. S. Eliot
, James Thurber
, George Orwell
and Robert Penn Warren
.
This strategic move had a long-term impact on the company because World Book was an established elementary textbook publisher and a test publisher.
. Under Jovanovich's leadership, the company diversified into non-publishing businesses such as insurance and business consulting. It also bought several theme parks—including SeaWorld
, which it acquired in 1976 for $46 million. The company divested its theme park division in 1989 for $1.1 billion.
Harcourt also published mass-market paperback books with Pyramid Books
, which it bought out in 1974 and renamed Jove Books, and eventually sold to the Putnam Berkley Group in 1979.
, a diversified company (that operated not only a national chain of movie theaters, but also retailers such as Neiman Marcus
and Bergdorf Goodman
), acquired Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for more than $1.5 billion. In 1993, General Cinema Corporation renamed itself Harcourt General, and restored the 1921-1960 name "Harcourt Brace & Company" to its publishing division. At the end of the year, it divested itself of its cinema division.
In 1999, Harcourt General also divested its retail division and shortened the publishing division's name to Harcourt, Inc.
acquired Harcourt General and Harcourt, Inc. Harcourt Trade Publishers was a member of the Reed Elsevier Group plc (NYSE: RUK and ENL), a publisher and information provider operating in four global industry sectors—science and medical, legal, education, and business.
Reed Elsevier then comprised the following divisions: Elsevier
(science and medical), LexisNexis
(legal), Harcourt Education (education), and Reed Business
(business).
in 2009.
Harcourt's adult books division was one of the most historic of the American literary publishers. Its backlist included Sinclair Lewis
, Virginia Woolf
, T. S. Eliot
, Robert Penn Warren
's All the King's Men
, and Alice Walker
's The Color Purple
. Harcourt also made a name for itself as an American publisher of literature in translation by acquiring writers such as Günter Grass
and Umberto Eco
.
Harcourt Children's Books published books for children of all ages, including interactive books for toddlers, picture books for young children, science fiction and fantasy novels for preteen and teens, as well as historical fiction. The house was the original publisher of such classics as The Little Prince
, Mary Poppins
, The Borrowers
, and Half Magic.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston
– U.S. secondary (grades 6–12) publisher with a leading position in literature and language arts, the largest middle and secondary school discipline. Holt also publishes in science, mathematics, social studies, and world languages.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich acquired the educational arm of Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1985 from CBS
, and it retained the Holt, Rinehart and Winston name. CBS also sold in 1985 the other arm of the company, the retail publishing arm, to the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
based in Stuttgart
, and it operated as a subsidiary publishing under its original name, Henry Holt and Company
.
Harcourt Achieve, Professional and Trade – publishers of supplemental and alternative core educational materials for pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 schools materials for adult education, school libraries and teacher professional development; and adult and children’s trade books. Includes Harcourt Achieve, Greenwood/Heinemann
, Global Library, Classroom Connect, Rigby, Steck-Vaugn, Harcourt Religion Publishers and Harcourt Trade Publishers.
Harcourt Assessment
- develops tests and resources for educational, psychological, speech, and occupational therapy assessment, as well as human resource selection and hiring (talent assessment). Tests include WISC
, WAIS
, WPPSI
, Raven's Progressive Matrices
and Versant
.
Harcourt Education International – publisher for the UK primary, secondary and vocational (further education) markets as well as English-medium schools worldwide. Also covers the Australasian primary, secondary and further education sectors. Its imprints include Heinemann
, Rigby, Ginn, Payne-Gallway and Raintree.
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The company was based in San Diego, California
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
, with an Editorial / Sales / Marketing / Rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida.
In 2007, the U.S. Schools Education and Trade Publishing parts of Harcourt Education were sold by Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier is a publisher and information provider operating in the science, medical, legal, risk and business sectors. It is listed on several of the world's major stock exchanges. It is a FTSE 100 and FT500 Global company...
to Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. Harcourt Assessment
Harcourt Assessment
Harcourt Assessment was a company that published and distributed educational and psychological assessment tools and therapy resources and provided educational assessment and data management services for national, state, district and local assessments...
and Harcourt Education International were acquired by Pearson
Pearson PLC
Pearson plc is a global media and education company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is both the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, with consumer imprints including Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Ladybird...
, the international education and information company, in January 2008.
World Book Company (1905)
The first-created component of what would eventually become Harcourt was the World Book Company (unrelated to the ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
-based World Book, Inc.
World Book Encyclopedia
The World Book Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia published in the United States. It is self-described as "the number-one selling print encyclopedia in the world." The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, and...
publisher of reference works) opened its first office in Manila
Manila
Manila is the capital of the Philippines. It is one of the sixteen cities forming Metro Manila.Manila is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay and is bordered by Navotas and Caloocan to the north, Quezon City to the northeast, San Juan and Mandaluyong to the east, Makati on the southeast,...
in 1905 and published English-language educational materials for schools in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. The company later moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where it became a test publisher. Much of the company's success was based on the work of Arthur S. Otis, who was best known for the intelligence tests he developed for the U.S. Army. Millions of World War I draftees took Otis's tests
Otis-Lennon School Ability Test
The Otis–Lennon School Ability Test , published by the successor of Harcourt Assessment — Pearson Education, Inc., a subsidiary of Pearson PLC — is a test of abstract thinking and reasoning ability of children pre-K to 18...
.
World Book Company became the first publisher of group-administered tests measuring mental ability when it published Otis's Group Intelligence Scale in 1918. Otis became a World Book employee in 1921. By 1960, it had a portfolio of educational tests, including the Stanford Achievement Test (1923), the Metropolitan Achievement Test (1932) and the Otis Mental Ability Test (1936).
Harcourt, Brace & Howe (1919) and Harcourt, Brace & Company
Alfred HarcourtAlfred Harcourt
Alfred Harcourt was an American Publisher, Compiler and Founder of Harcourt, Brace & Howe in 1919....
and Donald Brace
Donald Brace
Donald Clifford Brace was an American Publisher and Founder of Harcourt, Brace & Howe in 1919....
were friends at Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...
in New York, from which they both graduated in 1904. The two worked for Henry Holt & Company before founding, in 1919, their own publishing company, Harcourt, Brace & Howe. In 1921, they became Harcourt, Brace & Company. They published the works of a number of world renowned writers, including Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
, George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
and Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
.
Harcourt, Brace & World (1960) and successors
By 1960, Harcourt Brace led the market in high school textbook publishing, but had little presence in the elementary school market. That year, William Jovanovich, who had become president of the company in 1954, took the company public and merged Harcourt Brace & Company with World Book Company to create Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.This strategic move had a long-term impact on the company because World Book was an established elementary textbook publisher and a test publisher.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
In 1970, the company became known as Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ), with William Jovanovich as chairman. That same year, the company acquired The Psychological CorporationHarcourt Assessment
Harcourt Assessment was a company that published and distributed educational and psychological assessment tools and therapy resources and provided educational assessment and data management services for national, state, district and local assessments...
. Under Jovanovich's leadership, the company diversified into non-publishing businesses such as insurance and business consulting. It also bought several theme parks—including SeaWorld
SeaWorld
SeaWorld is a United States chain of marine mammal parks, oceanariums, and animal theme parks owned by SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. The parks feature captive orca, sea lion, and dolphin shows and zoological displays featuring various other marine animals. There are operations in Orlando,...
, which it acquired in 1976 for $46 million. The company divested its theme park division in 1989 for $1.1 billion.
Harcourt also published mass-market paperback books with Pyramid Books
Pyramid Books
Jove Books, formerly Pyramid Books, is a paperback publishing company, founded in 1949 by Almat Magazine Publishers . The company was sold to the Walter Reade Organization in the late 1960s. It was acquired in 1974 by Harcourt Brace which renamed it to Jove in 1977 and continued the line as an...
, which it bought out in 1974 and renamed Jove Books, and eventually sold to the Putnam Berkley Group in 1979.
Harcourt General and Harcourt, Inc.
In 1991, General Cinema CorporationGeneral Cinema Corporation
General Cinema was a nationwide chain of movie theaters that operated from 1935 until 2002. The theater chain, in its prime, operated approximately 621 screens, some of which were the first cinemas certified by THX. Its mascot was Popcorn Bob and his Candy Band, which graced the company's policy...
, a diversified company (that operated not only a national chain of movie theaters, but also retailers such as Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus, formerly Neiman-Marcus, is a luxury specialty retail department store operated by the Neiman Marcus Group in the United States. The company is headquartered in the One Marcus Square building in Downtown Dallas, Texas, and competes with other department stores such as Saks Fifth...
and Bergdorf Goodman
Bergdorf Goodman
Bergdorf Goodman is a luxury goods department store based on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The company was founded in 1899 by Herman Bergdorf and was later owned and managed by Edwin Goodman, and later his son Andrew Goodman....
), acquired Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for more than $1.5 billion. In 1993, General Cinema Corporation renamed itself Harcourt General, and restored the 1921-1960 name "Harcourt Brace & Company" to its publishing division. At the end of the year, it divested itself of its cinema division.
In 1999, Harcourt General also divested its retail division and shortened the publishing division's name to Harcourt, Inc.
Reed Elsevier Group plc
In 2001, the Anglo-Dutch publishing company Reed ElsevierReed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier is a publisher and information provider operating in the science, medical, legal, risk and business sectors. It is listed on several of the world's major stock exchanges. It is a FTSE 100 and FT500 Global company...
acquired Harcourt General and Harcourt, Inc. Harcourt Trade Publishers was a member of the Reed Elsevier Group plc (NYSE: RUK and ENL), a publisher and information provider operating in four global industry sectors—science and medical, legal, education, and business.
Reed Elsevier then comprised the following divisions: Elsevier
Elsevier
Elsevier is a publishing company which publishes medical and scientific literature. It is a part of the Reed Elsevier group. Based in Amsterdam, the company has operations in the United Kingdom, USA and elsewhere....
(science and medical), LexisNexis
LexisNexis
LexisNexis Group is a company providing computer-assisted legal research services. In 2006 it had the world's largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information...
(legal), Harcourt Education (education), and Reed Business
Reed Business Information
Reed Business Information is a large business publisher in the United States, United Kingdom, continental Europe, Australia and Asia, often referred to as RBI...
(business).
Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group
On 15 February 2007, Reed Elsevier announced its intention to sell its education arm, Harcourt Education, of which Harcourt Trade Publishers was a part. According to Reed Chief Executive Crispin Davis, "This is essentially a strategic decision that we want to focus more sharply on our three existing businesses ... with better growth rates." On 17 July 2007 Reed Elsevier announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Harcourt U.S. Schools Education business, including Harcourt Trade Publishers, to Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. The merger was completed and the Harcourt name ceased being used separately in 2008. Harcourt Religion was sold to Our Sunday VisitorOur Sunday Visitor
Our Sunday Visitor is a Roman Catholic publishing company in Huntington, Indiana which prints the American national weekly newspaper of that name, as well as numerous Catholic periodicals, religious books, pamphlets, catechetical materials, inserts for parish bulletins and offertory envelopes....
in 2009.
Products
Harcourt Trade Publishers published a wide range of books under a variety of imprints, including Harvest Books, Gulliver Books, Silver Whistle, Red Wagon Books, Harcourt Young Classics, Green Light Readers, Voyager Books/Libros Viajeros, Harcourt Paperbacks, Odyssey Classics, and Magic Carpet Books.Harcourt's adult books division was one of the most historic of the American literary publishers. Its backlist included Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
's All the King's Men
All the King's Men
All the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....
, and Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
's The Color Purple
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...
. Harcourt also made a name for itself as an American publisher of literature in translation by acquiring writers such as Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
and Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
.
Harcourt Children's Books published books for children of all ages, including interactive books for toddlers, picture books for young children, science fiction and fantasy novels for preteen and teens, as well as historical fiction. The house was the original publisher of such classics as The Little Prince
The Little Prince
The Little Prince , first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ....
, Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins is a series of children's books written by P. L. Travers and originally illustrated by Mary Shepard. The books centre on a magical English nanny, Mary Poppins. She is blown by the East wind to Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, London and into the Banks' household to care for their...
, The Borrowers
The Borrowers
The Borrowers, published in 1952, is the first in a series of children's fantasy novels by English author Mary Norton. The novel and its sequels are about tiny people who live in people's homes and "borrow" things to survive while keeping their existence unknown...
, and Half Magic.
Divisions of Harcourt
Harcourt School Publishers – U.S. elementary (pre-K–6) publisher with particular strength in the four major subject areas of science, reading, math and social studies.Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Holt McDougal is an American publishing company, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, that specializes in textbooks for use in secondary schools. Holt, Rinehart and Winston was a division of Harcourt Education...
– U.S. secondary (grades 6–12) publisher with a leading position in literature and language arts, the largest middle and secondary school discipline. Holt also publishes in science, mathematics, social studies, and world languages.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich acquired the educational arm of Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1985 from CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, and it retained the Holt, Rinehart and Winston name. CBS also sold in 1985 the other arm of the company, the retail publishing arm, to the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike...
based in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, and it operated as a subsidiary publishing under its original name, Henry Holt and Company
Henry Holt and Company
Henry Holt and Company is an American book publishing company. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt...
.
Harcourt Achieve, Professional and Trade – publishers of supplemental and alternative core educational materials for pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 schools materials for adult education, school libraries and teacher professional development; and adult and children’s trade books. Includes Harcourt Achieve, Greenwood/Heinemann
Heinemann (book publisher)
Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S. publisher Doubleday. It was later acquired by commemorate Thomas Tilling in 1961...
, Global Library, Classroom Connect, Rigby, Steck-Vaugn, Harcourt Religion Publishers and Harcourt Trade Publishers.
Harcourt Assessment
Harcourt Assessment
Harcourt Assessment was a company that published and distributed educational and psychological assessment tools and therapy resources and provided educational assessment and data management services for national, state, district and local assessments...
- develops tests and resources for educational, psychological, speech, and occupational therapy assessment, as well as human resource selection and hiring (talent assessment). Tests include WISC
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children , developed by Dr. David Wechsler, is an individually administered intelligence test for children between the ages of 6 and 16 inclusive that can be completed without reading or writing...
, WAIS
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale intelligence quotient tests are the primary clinical instruments used to measure adult and adolescent intelligence. The original WAIS was published in February 1955 by David Wechsler, as a revision of the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale...
, WPPSI
Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence
The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence is an intelligence test designed for children ages 2 years 6 months to 7 years 3 months developed by David Wechsler in 1967. It is a descendent of the earlier Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children...
, Raven's Progressive Matrices
Raven's Progressive Matrices
Raven's Progressive Matrices are non-verbal multiple choice measures of the reasoning component of Spearman's g , which is often referred to as general intelligence. The tests were originally developed by John C. Raven in 1936...
and Versant
Versant
The Versant suite of tests are computerized tests of spoken language available from Pearson. Versant tests were the first fully automated tests of spoken language to use advanced speech processing technology to assess the spoken language skills of non-native speakers. The Versant language suite...
.
Harcourt Education International – publisher for the UK primary, secondary and vocational (further education) markets as well as English-medium schools worldwide. Also covers the Australasian primary, secondary and further education sectors. Its imprints include Heinemann
Heinemann (book publisher)
Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S. publisher Doubleday. It was later acquired by commemorate Thomas Tilling in 1961...
, Rigby, Ginn, Payne-Gallway and Raintree.
Sources
- Company History. Harcourt Assessment Web site. 2006. Accessed 21 February 2007.
- History of Harcourt Trade Publishers]. Harcourt Trade Publishers Web site. 2004. Accessed 4 December 2006
- Harcourt Achieve. The New York Times Job Market Web site. Last accessed 4 December 2006.