Fletcher Harper

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Fletcher Harper, portrayed by Charles Loring Elliott (1812–1868)

Fletcher Harper (born January 31, 1806 in Newtown near Brooklyn , Long Island , New York , † May 29, 1877 in New York City ) was an American printer and publisher of the New York City-based company Harper & Brothers , which today when HarperCollins persists.

family

He was the grandson of the British James Harper, who immigrated to the United States in the mid-18th century and who had settled in Newtown on Long Island, founded a small farm there, and married. This had belonged to the "Wesleyan Society" (Wesleyan Church) so named after the British preacher John Wesley , from which the Methodists later developed. In 1816, James Harper and his family moved to New York City and worked there as a dealer. His eldest son Joseph Harper (1765-1849), a carpenter and farmer, however, stayed in Newtown, where he married the daughter of his employer Jacobus Kolyer and his wife Jane, née Miller, Elizabeth Kolyer (1771-1845), the came from a Dutch immigrant family. The couple had six children, two of whom died in childhood. The four other children were James Harper (1795–1869), John Harper (1797–1875), Joseph Wesley Harper (1801–1870) and Fletcher Harper as the youngest of these four sons.

Around 1826 he married the daughter of a clergyman, Jane Freelove († 1895), née Lyon. The marriage resulted in two sons, Joseph Wesley (1827-1886) and Fletcher junior (1828-1890).

Professional development

The two eldest sons, James and John, learned the trade of a printer and finally founded a printing company in New York's Dover Street in March 1817, which operated under the name J. & J. Harper and published around 200 book titles under this name. This print shop later became a publishing house, where Joseph Wesley also began training as a printer in 1823. In 1825, the youngest of the four brothers, Fletcher, finally joined the company as an apprentice. Unlike his three older brothers who grew up in the country, Fletcher had been a city kid from the age of 9. He received an offer from them that, as soon as he had been able to save 500 US dollars from his wages, he could become a partner in the printing company. He achieved this goal in the year before he came of age. The publisher's original name remained until 1833, before it was changed to Harper & Brothers . The frequently asked question, which Harper should be mentioned first, was answered in unison with the fact that each of the four brothers was meant by the family name Harper mentioned in the company name as well as included in the brothers . None of them is paramount, each has its own individual skills.

In the course of many years of working together in the fraternal company, Fletcher eventually developed into the person who represented the company externally. In this context he was referred to as "the major" within the family. As a member of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church , he lived in New York City as well as in his summer residence in Irvington-upon-the-Hudson or worked in his office on NYC's Franklin Square. He liked to travel and repeatedly crossed the Atlantic by ship on business.

Fletcher Harper, after a woodcut by Gustav Kruell, 1876; National Portrait Gallery , Smithsonian Institution , here in the obituary on the cover of Harper's Weekly, June 16, 1877

His abilities became visible when he founded Harper's Magazine (also Harper's Monthly ), the second oldest magazine in the USA, in 1850 and Harper's Weekly in 1857 . He was considered the actual editor-in-chief, although he never wrote articles himself, and was described as a person of action ("go-getter"). He not only had an impact on corporate policy, but also oriented the papers socially and politically. Striving for a political office, however, was far from him. Harper's Weekly , which he gradually developed into a richly illustrated paper, became one of the most important politically active press products in the United States during the Civil War between 1861 and 1865 . This was largely due to the fact that Fletcher Harper gave his editors, draftsmen and caricaturists, including Thomas Nast , the greatest possible creative freedom and, in some cases, took a clear political position, particularly against slavery between 1861 and 1865.

In the 1860s, during the William Tweed- led New York City Council, he had managed to sell large volumes of textbooks to the New York School Board. Nevertheless, the honest Harper brothers immediately gave their cartoonist Thomas Nast the green light when it came to actively combating Tweed's corrupt machinations.

Fletcher Harper was the person in charge of charity activities at the company, always careful to do so with humility without seeking public attention.

He outlived his three brothers and continued to run the company. Fletcher Harper died at the age of 71 after a long illness, a serious stomach ailment ("gastric fever", possibly typhoid ). He was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery (Section 95, Lot 947) in Brooklyn. His grave monument, which still exists today, bears the inscription "From Death Unto Life" (= From death to life), which refers to life after death.

The company was continued after him by the sons of the four brothers, who were Fletcher's son Fletcher junior (1828–1890), the son of James, Philip Jacob Arcularius (1824–1896), the two sons of John, John Wesley (1831– 1915) and Joseph Abner (* 1833) and Wesley's son Joseph Wesley (1826–1886).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Fletcher Harper (PDF file; 140 KB), obituary. In: The New York Times , May 30, 1877.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Harper Brothers . In: Encyclopedia Britannica , at: britannica.com
  3. ↑ Elizabeth Harper's death notice. In: Commercial Advertiser , November 8, 1845, p. 3.
  4. ^ Obituary by Elizabeth Harper. In: Commercial Advertiser , November 17, 1845, p. 2.
  5. ^ Company Profile . In: HarperCollins , on: harpercollins.com
  6. ^ A b Robert L. Gale: A Herman Melville Encyclopedia . Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, Connecticut, 1995. ISBN 0-3132-9011-3 , pp. 180f.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Fletcher Harper . In: The American Bookseller (obituary). Vol. 3, No. 11, June 1, 1877. pp. 326-327.
  8. ^ Julia Ryff: Lillian Bassman (1917–2012). Life and work . Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne a. Weimar 2012. ISBN 978-3-412-50167-9 , p. 30.
  9. ↑ Thomas Nast . In: Encyclopedia Britannica, at: britannica.com
  10. ↑ Fletcher Harper Tomb , Green Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York City, at: findagrave.com
  11. ↑ John Wesley Harper Gravesite , Green Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York City, at: findagrave.com
personal data
SURNAME Harper, Fletcher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American publisher
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1806
PLACE OF BIRTH Newtown near Brooklyn , Long Island , New York
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1877
Place of death New York City