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Harper's Magazine

American monthly magazine

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The magazine has published works of prominent authors and political figures, including Herman Melville, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. Willie Morris's resignation as editor in 1971 was considered a major event, and many other employees of the magazine resigned with him. The magazine has developed into the 21st century, adding several blogs. It is related under the same original publisher (Harper) to Harper's Bazaar magazine, focused on fashion, and several other "Harper's" titles but each publication is independently produced. Although it shares historical ties to the publishing house Harper, it is not currently affiliated as it merged with William Collins, Sons to become HarperCollins.

According to a 2012 Pew Research Center study, Harper's Magazine, along with The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, ranked highest in college-educated readership among major American media outlets.

History

19th century

Harper's Magazine began as Harper's New Monthly Magazine in New York City in June 1850, by publisher Harper & Brothers. The company also founded the magazines Harper's Weekly and Harper's Bazaar, and grew to become HarperCollins. The first press run of Harper's Magazine included 7,500 copies and sold out almost immediately. Six months later, the magazine's circulation had grown to 50,000.

The early issues reprinted material pirated from English authors such as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and the Brontë sisters. The magazine soon was publishing the work of American artists and writers, and in time commentary by the likes of Winston Churchill and Woodrow Wilson. Portions of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick were first published in the October 1851 issue of Harper's under the title, "The Town-Ho's Story", named after Chapter 54 of Moby-Dick.

20th century

The magazine changed its name to Harper's Monthly Magazine in 1901, and simplified it again in 1912, to Harper's Magazine.

In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson & Company, becoming Harper & Row (now HarperCollins). In 1965, the magazine was separately incorporated, and became a division of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company, owned by the Cowles Media Company.

In the 1970s, Harper's Magazine published Seymour Hersh's reporting of the My Lai massacre by United States forces in Vietnam. In 1971, editor Willie Morris resigned under pressure from owner John Cowles Jr., prompting resignations from many of the magazine's star contributors and staffers, including Norman Mailer, David Halberstam, Robert Kotlowitz, Marshall Frady, and Larry L. King:

Morris's departure jolted the literary world. Mailer, William Styron, Gay Talese, Bill Moyers, and Tom Wicker declared that they would boycott Harper's as long as the Cowles family owned it, and the four staff writers hired by Morris—Frady among them—resigned in solidarity with him.

— Scott Sherman

Robert Shnayerson, a senior editor at Time magazine, was hired to replace Morris as Harper's ninth editor, serving in that position from 1971 until 1976.

Lewis H. Lapham served as managing editor from 1976 until 1981, when the job was taken over by Michael Kinsley. Lapham returned to the position again from 1983 until 2006. On June 17, 1980, the Star Tribune announced it would cease publishing Harper's Magazine after the August 1980 issue, but on July 9, 1980, John R. MacArthur (who goes by the name Rick) and his father, Roderick, obtained pledges from the directorial boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Atlantic Richfield Company, and CEO Robert Orville Anderson to amass the $1.5 million needed to establish the Harper's Magazine Foundation. It now publishes the magazine.

In 1984, Lapham and MacArthur, now publisher and president of the foundation, respectively, along with new executive editor Michael Pollan, redesigned Harper's and introduced the "Harper's Index" with statistics derived from current events, "Readings", and the "Annotation" departments to complement its fiction, essays, reportage, and reviews.

21st century

Under the Lapham and MacArthur's leadership, Harper's Magazine continued publishing literary fiction by John Updike, George Saunders, and others. Politically, Harper's has been a vocal critic of U.S. domestic and foreign policies. Editor Lapham's monthly "Notebook" columns have lambasted the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations. Beginning in 2003, the magazine concentrated on reporting about the Iraq War, including long articles on the battle for Fallujah, and the cronyism of the American reconstruction of Iraq. Other reporting has covered abortion issues, cloning, and global warming.

The magazine publishes a newsletter, featuring a rotating set of authors, called the "Weekly Review", a three-paragraph distillation of the week's political, scientific, and bizarre news. Like "Harper's Index" and "Findings" in the print edition of the magazine, "Weekly Review" items are typically arranged for ironic contrast.

As of the November 2025 issue, Dan Piepenbring writes the print edition's "New Books" column.

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