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http://www.harpercollins.com/hc/aboutus/aboutus.aspHarperCollins Publishers is one of the world's leading English-language publishers with headquarters in New York. The company is a subsidiary of News Corporation. The house of Mark Twain, the Bronte sisters, Thackeray, Dickens, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein and Margaret Wise Brown, HarperCollins was founded in New York City in 1817 by the brothers James and John Harper. In 1987, Harper & Row was acquired by News Corporation. The worldwide book group, which was formed following News Corporation's acquisition of the British publisher William Collins in January 1990, has publishing groups in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia/New Zealand and India.
Today, HarperCollins is a broad-based publisher with strengths in literary and commercial fiction, business books, children's books, cookbooks, mystery, romance, reference, religious and spiritual books. The company has revenues that top $1 billion annually.
The company has continued an impressive trend of rising profits over the last five years, allowing HarperCollins to further broaden and strengthen its publishing program through acquisition. In 1999, HarperCollins acquired The Ecco Press, one of the world's most prestigious literary publishers; William Morrow & Company and Avon Books, two prominent publishers with long and distinguished histories; and Amistad Press, one of the country's pre-eminent publishers of works by and about African Americans. In July 2000, HarperCollins announced the purchase of Fourth Estate, one of the UK's most respected independent publishers, which has become a division of HarperCollins UK, and has launched a U.S. operation.