ReganBooks was an American bestselling imprint or division of HarperCollins book publishing house (parent company is News Corporation), headed by editor and publisher Judith Regan, started in 1994 and ended in late 2006. During its existence, Regan was called, by LA Weekly, "the world's most successful publisher"."The Gathering Storm"  by Brendan Bernhard, LA Weekly, June 2, 2005 The division reportedly earned $120 million a year. ReganBooks focused on celebrity authors and controversial topics, sometimes from recent tabloids."Trend-Setting Publisher Plans To Move to and Go Hollywood" by Edward Wyatt, The New York Times, April 12, 2005"ReganBooks Moving to Hollywood" , The Book Standard, April 12, 2005

 History and publications
Prominent ReganBooks titles include Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, biographies by General Tommy Franks, professional wrestler Mick Foley, and radio talk show host Howard Stern, three different books on the Scott Peterson case, and those by political commentator Sean Hannity. Though ultimately owned by politically active Rupert Murdoch, ReganBooks disavowed any political agenda, publishing, for example, books both supportive of and critical of George W. Bush."Political but Not Partisan: A Publisher Has It Both Ways", by Edward Wyatt, The New York Times, October 13, 2004

In August 2004, ReganBooks had three books on The New York Times Best Seller list, including the top two non-fiction positions, and the highest profit ratio at HarperCollins."The Devil and Miss Regan" by Judith Newman, January 2005, Vanity Fair

In 2005, ReganBooks announced plans to move from Manhattan to Los Angeles, making it one of the first major book publishers to move from the east to the west coast.

 Controversy and closure
In November 2006, ReganBooks announced plans to publish O. J. Simpson's book If I Did It; publication was later cancelled by News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch. After the public fallout Newsweek reported, "Regan's meddlesome-free days are almost certainly over" and Murdoch will be "clamping" down on control.

On December 15, 2006, Regan was fired from HarperCollins, allegedly over anti-Semitic comments. The staff at ReganBooks were reassigned within the HarperCollins General Book Group. The New York Times reported that ReganBooks' offices were closed and "a stunned Ms. Regan was confronted by security guards who arrived with boxes and ordered her to leave." Regan sued News Corporation for $100 million for defamation over the anti-Semitism charge, asserting that it was "completely fabricated"; in January 2008 News Corporation settled the lawsuit and publicly stated, "After carefully considering the matter, we accept Ms. Regan's position that she did not say anything that was anti-Semitic in nature, and further believe that Ms. Regan is not anti-Semitic."

Books published
 Bodansky, Yossef. The Secret History of the Iraq War. (ReganBooks, 2005)
Boortz, Neal; Linder, John. The FairTax Book. (ReganBooks, 2005)
 Bork, Robert H. Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. (ReganBooks, 1996) .
Canseco, Jose. Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big. (ReganBooks, 2005)
Dickinson, Janice. No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel. (ReganBooks, 2002)
Dux, Frank. The Secret Man: An American Warrior's Uncensored Story. (ReganBooks, 1996)
Foley, Mick. Foley Is Good: And the Real World Is Faker than Wrestling. (ReganBooks, 2002)
Gibson, John. Hating America: The New World Sport. (ReganBooks, 2005)
Hannity, Sean. Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism (ReganBooks, 2004)
Hannity, Sean. Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism (ReganBooks, 2002)
Feldschuh, Michael. The September 11 Photo Project. (ReganBooks, 2002)
Jameson, Jenna. How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale. (ReganBooks, 2004)
Maguire, Gregory. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (ReganBooks, 1995)
Payne, Patricia. Sex Tips from a Dominatrix. (ReganBooks, 1999)
Simpson, O. J. If I Did It. (Cancelled in November 2006)
 Thompson, Paul. The Terror Timeline. (ReganBooks, 2004)
Taormino, Tristan. Down and Dirty Sex Secrets. (ReganBooks, 2003)

References

Category:Publishing companies established in 1994
Category:Companies disestablished in 2006
Category:News Corporation subsidiaries
Category:Defunct book publishing companies of the United States
Category:1994 establishments in New York City
Category:2006 disestablishments in California

ReganBooks was an American bestselling imprint or division of HarperCollins book publishing house ( parent company is News Corporation ) , headed by editor and publisher Judith Regan , started in 1994 and ended in late 2006 .

The Gathering Storm
Judith Regan, the world’s most successful publisher, heads for the coast
Thursday, June 2, 2005 - 12:00 am
Judith Regan doesn’t want to be photographed, but she is ready to talk.
Dressed in a cream pantsuit, an orange blouse, orange bracelets and open-faced
orange sandals, the woman reputed to be the world’s most successful publisher
looks stylish, feminine and just a little bit scary. Interviewed in her 18th-floor
office in midtown Manhattan, she ushers me into a comfortable beige armchair and
tells me why she is moving her HarperCollins imprint, ReganBooks, to Los Angeles.
Over the last 20 years, she explains, New York has turned into a city that’s better suited to bankers, Wall Street lawyers and the superrich than it is to publishers. Artists are fleeing, creativity is dying, and the rents keep going up.
“People have a very hard time having a life here,” says this single mother of two and recent paramour of ex–New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. “And because of that, it’s more and more difficult to get staff to stay in this business. It’s not just ReganBooks. It’s everybody in the book-publishing business. They all lie about it, they deceive you, but that is the naked ugly truth. It’s very difficult, because they can’t afford to have a life here.”
But if New York is overly money-driven, then some people, I suggest, might say that Regan’s hypercapitalistic style of publishing — recent best-selling titles include How To Make Love Like a Porn Star, Juiced and Sex, Sex, and More Sex — is part of the problem.
“Then they’re completely uninformed,” she snaps, voice rising, eyes turning steely. “Most of the people who write about the publishing business don’t know anything about the publishing business. And let me just tell you, it’s called the publishing BUSINESS! I’m not running a philanthropic library, okay? If you came in to interview anyone else, in any other kind of business, whether they were selling shoes, dresses or apartments, would you take issue with the fact that they did it successfully?”
Um, er . . .
“I publish every kind of book that there is to be published,” Regan continues before I can get another “um” in. “I publish literary fiction, I publish serious nonfiction, cookbooks and style books, I publish all kinds of political books, I publish very esoteric books. Journalists choose not to write about those books, because they’re trying to do the very thing they accuse me of doing. They don’t report. They’re lazy and sloppy, and they don’t do their job!”
Given the kind of articles that have appeared about her over the years — a 2002 profile in Forbes titled “Trash Sells” is representative, while “The Devil and Miss Regan,” a 6,000-word, slow-motion assassination that ran in Vanity Fair last January, is probably the most vicious — it’s no surprise that Regan looks at reporters the way a tenement dweller clutching a rolled-up magazine looks at a cockroach peeking out from under a leaky sink. And while no one would mistake ReganBooks for Farrar, Straus & Giroux, it is true that she is more than just the publisher of Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Jenna Jameson, Zone Diet books, and the memoirs of assorted WWE wrestlers and steroid-using baseball players.
For instance, though she works for Rupert Murdoch and has been pegged as being “to the right of Genghis Khan” politically, she has published books by Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, Joe Trippi, Arianna Huffington, Mark Green and Alan Colmes, among others. She has also dipped into literary respectability with books by Oprah favorite Wally Lamb, a biography of Alfred Hitchcock and other, less-publicized endeavors. Waiting to enter her office, I leafed through two recent titles: Even After All This Time, a memoir about a family that fled Iran after the fall of the shah in 1979, and Paddy Whacked, a history of Irish-American gangsters that a reviewer for The Village Voice called “captivating.” Both looked like books any “class” publisher would have been happy to bring out.
The news of Regan’s impending move has set off a predictably schizophrenic reaction — inwardly pleased, outwardly blasé — among the bookworms of Southern California. “Be still, my heart,” quipped David L. Ulin in the L.A. Times, noting that this was the first time in living memory a major New York publisher has forsaken the Big Apple for La La Land, but chiding Regan for confusing L.A. with Hollywood, and culture with “the aesthetics of the bottom line.”
There are times when L.A. resembles a haughty beauty who wants to be noticed and feigns indifference the moment she is. The obvious truth is that nothing would delight bookish Angelenos more than if a host of major East Coast publishing houses were to stampede en masse in the direction of Venice Beach, dog-eared copies of Cheever and Bellow in hand. If L.A. were ever to dominate writing and publishing the way it does movies and television, the culture war between the coasts would effectively be over.
But don’t get any big ideas about that happening, says Michael Cader of Publishers Marketplace: “I mostly think any importance or significance to the move was drastically overstated by The New York Times. ReganBooks has had an office in California for a long time, they’ve transacted a lot of business in California for a long time. In many respects, people see this as being about Judith’s non-publishing aspirations. This is about Judith wanting to be a bigtime producer. She wants to be a mogul.”
Daniel Halpern, who grew up in L.A., is editor of the Ecco Press, which is owned by HarperCollins. He points out that Regan is hardly the first big publisher to venture west. “Harcourt’s out there in San Diego already — everyone seems to forget that. And then there’s HarperCollins San Francisco. They have their own list of books, their own editors, they’re very autonomous. I’m always struck by the way people report this, as if it’s never happened before.” That said, Halpern believes Regan and Los Angeles are a perfect fit. “She brings L.A. to L.A.”
Regan says she has no idea whether other New York publishers will follow her example, but of one thing we may be certain: She would never follow theirs. “I don’t have anything to do with the New York publishing world,” she says. “I don’t have time. I came into this business as an outsider. I did very well in it, there’s a lot of envy — what can I tell you?”
As for the sniping emanating from the more rarefied precincts of literary L.A., she says she’s not surprised by it, and not perturbed either.
“La-di-da. Who cares? I don’t care.”
Regan doesn’t know for sure yet when the move to L.A. will take place (next
January is her guess), nor has she decided where her office will be. It may be
in a new building on the Fox Studio lot. She also has her eye on an industrial
space in Hollywood. Wherever it is, it will be cheaper and roomier than her office
in New York.
“There’s been a lot of snottiness about my saying it’s cheaper [in L.A.], but it’s cheaper than Manhattan,” she says. “This office is $58 a square foot. I have yet to see any office in any place in L.A. that’s $58 a square foot.”
Though she’s traveled here regularly on business for 20 years, Regan speaks of the West Coast with the zeal of a brand-new convert. She loves the trees, the flowers, the markets, the architecture, the neighborhoods, the weather, the hiking, the people. Most of all, she loves the creativity. “Because the film and television businesses are in Los Angeles, the number of creative people who live there is greater than it is anywhere else,” she says, adding that about a third of her authors are from L.A., more than from any other city. “Most of our books are designed out of L.A. — really great book designers, they live there. If they come to New York, they realize they can’t afford to live here and they end up leaving. And so, like-minded people find each other and live in communities in Echo Park and Los Feliz. The design community, writers, certainly film and television people, are in abundance there. It’s a great creative community, filled with really lovely people.”
Variety has reported that Regan, who hosted a chat show on Fox for eight years, plans to return to the small screen. But the publisher herself, who looks remarkably youthful for a 51-year-old who has been working 16-hour days since she was in high school, says that while a radio show is a possibility, television is not.
“I’m too old for television. I’m not having a face-lift, I’m not putting Botox in my face, and I’m not injecting my mouth with stuff. I’m not interested in any of that. I think it’s unhealthy and unnatural.”
And what about “synergy,” the much-touted confluence of books, television and film Regan is said to be pursuing? She already has a hit with A&E’s Growing Up Gotti, which she created and produced. She is co-producing the movie version of one of her books, The Dive, with James Cameron, and half a dozen other movie projects based on books she has published are in the works. Old-school publishers may tremble when they gaze into their crystal balls, but not Regan.
“I think that the future is going to be an interesting place. My children get all their information online. My daughter’s IM-ing while she’s doing her homework, on the cell phone, on the other phone, with her Palm Pilot. She’s hooked up to everything. She’s an information junkie. She knows everything about everything, and she’s very savvy, and very techno-savvy, and my son is too. And I think in the future she’ll be watching The O.C. on her cell phone.”
As to how all these technological changes will affect the market for those musty, fusty, dusty old things called books, Regan professes indifference or perhaps just a total lack of fear. Content is content, whatever form it comes in, she believes, and for a publisher she doesn’t seem particularly attached to the mystique of the printed page. Story is all. “We’ll just change as things change, and hopefully we’ll be ahead of the curve,” she says breezily.
In the meantime, she’s still got her nose in a book. “Years ago I would have told
you that I only liked to read fiction, just like every college graduate who walks
in here,” she says to me when asked about her own taste in books. “I was an English
major. Back then, I was into Irish literature — Yeats, Joyce, blah blah blah.
Then you graduate into the real world and have to earn a living and get interested
in a lot of other things. I’m not an elitist about material, and I like reading
different kinds of things. So whether it’s a history or political book or commercial
fiction or literary fiction or true crime, I like to read. I read all the time.
I’m like addicted to reading. It’s a sickness.”

Question: who is the editor of harpercollins book publishing house

Answer: Judith Regan

Question: what is the name of the american bestselling imprint of harpercollins

Answer: ReganBooks

Question: when did harpercollins start publishing books

Answer: 1994

Question: what is the name of the parent company of harpercollins

Answer: News Corporation

Question: when did the regan books division end

Answer: 2006

Question: what is the parent company of news corporation

Answer: HarperCollins book publishing house

Question: who is the head of the regan books division

Answer: editor and publisher Judith Regan

In August 2004 , ReganBooks had three books on The New York Times Best Seller list , including the top two non - fiction positions , and the highest profit ratio at HarperCollins .

" The Devil and Miss Regan " by Judith Newman , January 2005 , Vanity Fair

The room is clammy and the food pap at the 2004 PEN annual gala, at the Pierre hotel in New York, which makes it easier to concentrate on the real purpose of the evening: gauging one's place in the literati pecking order. (Where's my seat? Where is it relative to Salman Rushdie's?) After several minutes of M.C.-ing by a tanned and bow-tied Tom Brokaw, the writer A. E. Hotchner announces this year's winner of the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award: Barbara Parsons Lane, one of the writers in Couldn't Keep It to Myself, a collection of testimonies by women prisoners, edited by best-selling author Wally Lamb. "It is published by HarperCollins," Hotchner begins.
A glowering brunette looks like she is going to leap out of her seat. "ReganBooks!" she shouts. Judith Regan fumes. "Every fucking time we do something prestigious, they overlook us. But God forbid we do a piece of shit … " The people at her table laugh weakly and follow the standard protocol recommended by veteran Regan staffers: Just don't look her directly in the eye.
Which is not to say she doesn't have a point. Judith Regan, quite possibly the most successful woman in publishing, is also the industry's Rodney Dangerfield: she gets no respect. Fear, yes; loathing, certainly. But no respect. This year, the company that bears her name generated more than $80 million in revenue and in August had three books on the New York Times best-seller list, an extraordinary achievement for a small imprint. ReganBooks has the highest profit ratio at its parent company, HarperCollins.
"She has an incredible hit rate—she had 13 books on the best-seller list this year," says Michael J. Wolf, the managing partner of McKinsey & Company's media and entertainment practice. "Some of her success becomes this urban legend. But I do think she probably knows better than anybody today how to promote a book."
More recently she has begun to have success in the field she's been gunning for for a long time: television and movie production. She's one of the executive producers of Growing Up Gotti and was the executive producer of the docudrama based on Michael Bergin's tell-all, The Other Man: John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette and Me. It was one of the highest-rated specials of the year on A&E. Never one to miss a chance for cross-pollination, after she turned up last season as a guest judge on the finale of The Swan, she is now publishing a book on the series, The Swan Curriculum: Create a Spectacular New You with 12 Life-Changing Steps in 12 Amazing Weeks.
Regan calls herself "an average American with a two-minute attention span." But her thinking about the book world is anything but average. It was Regan who first realized that talk-radio audiences and others who seemed entirely outside the reach of literary culture would, in fact, buy books, and signed up Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, and the guys from the World Wrestling Federation, all of whom became best-selling phenomenons. While she professes no personal right-wing leanings (close friends roll their eyes—"She's to the right of Genghis Khan," says one), she has endeared herself to HarperCollins owner Rupert Murdoch with her successful publishing of right-wingers such as Robert Bork and Sean Hannity and tough guys such as former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik and Iraq-war majordomo General Tommy Franks. But she goes where the money and interest are, which means she has also published Michael Moore, left-leaning Alan Colmes, and, startlingly, right before the election, Glenn W. Smith's Unfit Commander: Texans for Truth Take On George W. Bush.
Above all, while she does publish literary darlings such as Wally Lamb—an Oprah favorite—her name has become synonymous with sex, with books like last year's She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman, the Jenna Jameson bio, and next year's oral history of the porn-film industry by Legs McNeil. "I don't publish pornography," she recently told The New York Times. "I publish smart books about sex. A lot of people try to imitate what I do, but they don't do it well."
Many in publishing would agree. When it comes to picking books, "Judith doesn't listen to anything or anybody," says brand-identity designer Jeff Stone, who is also the companion of HarperCollins C.E.O. Jane Friedman. "A man has a golden gut. She goes with her golden vagina."
Yet, with her enormous success, and with her company celebrating its 10-year anniversary, Judith Regan is widely known as the Angriest Woman in Media: tormented, and a tormentor—the Scott Rudin of books. As one woman who'd worked in both publishing and television production told me, "She has a pathological personality that's totally appropriate in the film business. But it doesn't exist in publishing." Several prominent agents I talked to will not take their projects to her; even some of her admirers didn't want to talk on the record, because they don't want to be anywhere on her radar.
Her friends, several of whom were prompted by Judith to contact me for this article, argue that it's not so much anger as passion—for the books, for winning—that drives her. Her enemies, who are legion, say she is (as one former friend put it) "the highest-functioning deranged person I've ever known."
Crazy, or crazy like a fox? We'll never know for sure, because Regan declined to be interviewed for this article. But she seemed only too eager to have her friends speak for her. They called; they sent e-mails; they sent Instant Messages. Regan may have alienated most of the New York media, but she is fiercely loyal to those friends she has, and they to her. "Judith's story is a triumphant one—she's had to endure so much to achieve what she has—happy children and a great career," writes Doug Schoen, the Clinton pollster and founding partner of the research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, in an e-mail. "Have some courage and tell the truth: she's beautiful, she's bold, she's smart and she did it—against all odds. If you see her company logo you'll understand. It's a woman with a baby on one hip and a sword on the other."
The company logo does say a great deal about her. She sees herself as a warrior: she is fond of quoting Patton (at one point, she had taped to her computer "The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on"), and in her home had a painting of the biblical heroine Judith, who delivered Israel from a foreign army by first beguiling and then beheading the Assyrian commander Holofernes. There have been periods in her life when she persevered through enormous pain and quite remarkable bad luck. (Her capacity for picking winning books is equaled only by her capacity for picking the wrong men.) But like a lot of great warriors, when there is peace she doesn't seem to know what to do with herself. She gets bored. And then the next thought is: I know what I'll do! I'll start a war!
"What is she so angry about? That is the $64,000 question," says a former boyfriend. "Her politics, a childhood of deprivation, not being considered an insider in publishing … in some ways, anger animates her life."
In August 2004, Regan trumpeted her recent successes with this steamy inter-office memo: "ReganBooks has achieved nirvana. General Franks is on top of Jenna Jameson in the #1 and #2 positions."
And there you have it. Sex and violence, the yin and yang of Regan's life. And she's never been shy about saying so.
Judith Regan spent her early years on a farm in Massachusetts living with her immigrant Sicilian maternal grandparents; a photo of her as a child, seated with her grandfather, is the cover of ReganBooks' winter 2005 catalogue. (The back cover is Judith today, slinky and coiffed.) By the age of 10 she had moved with her family to Bay Shore, a solidly middle-class community on Long Island.
Judith was the third of five children. Her father taught fifth grade; her mother had bigger dreams for her children. The two brothers were hard acts to follow. The eldest, Leo, graduated from Yale and lives in Ireland; John, the second-eldest, is a renowned spinal surgeon in L.A.
"Judith was told by her mother how worthless she was: You're nothing," says Al Lowman, the literary agent who considers Regan "a sister." It is easy to see how Regan—who kept photos of herself dressed as a man around the office, and has been known to shout "I have the biggest cock in the building!" at a meeting when she felt her colleagues were wimping out on an editorial decision—might feel she needs to act like a man, or, rather, a caricature of a man, to come out on top.
Regan herself joked on her late and unlamented talk show, That Regan Woman, that she had to become something because her mother always told her she couldn't. Regan's younger sister Maureen—a singer turned literary agent (she recorded an album with songs such as "A Good Man Is Hard to Find; A Hard Man Is Good"), who has a book about infertility coming out from ReganBooks this summer and is purportedly writing a memoir about her family—puts a slightly different spin on it. "My mother wasn't sitting there telling us how great we were. It's a tough way to grow up. But you know what? You achieve things from being driven."
"Judy was so full of life, and funny, funny, funny, a lot funnier back then than she is now," Maureen adds. From the time she was little, she loved to shock. "She would come home to this Irish-Sicilian Catholic family and just shout out 'penis' to get my father. Or she'd mold her mashed potatoes into big penises, and then she'd say, 'Maureen, look!'" Money was tight in the Regan household, and during high school, where she played violin and served as yearbook editor, she got a job at a local Carvel store. Soon she was promoted to manager—and that branch of Carvel became particularly profitable. ("It became known for the decorations on its cakes," Maureen explains—which, thankfully, given her food-sculpting talents, were limited to flowers and butterflies.) Regan was at the top of her high-school class (in 2003 she was inducted into the Bay Shore High School Hall of Fame; other inductees include soul singer Patti Austin and 70s roots rocker Commander Cody) and received a scholarship to Vassar.
She took to college a Saint Bernard named Pippin, a fierce ambition, and a significant chip on her shoulder, says former friend and college classmate Michael Wolff. (Wolff, now a writer for this magazine, had a falling-out with Regan over a 1999 article he wrote about her in New York magazine. But for 25 years they were close friends.) According to Wolff, she resented the wealthy Vassar girls and their effortless social ease.
Regan's critics say she's a self-dramatizer who's constantly portraying herself as a victim of predatory males, and that may be partially true. But at the same time, from an early age she seemed to be a magnet for the troubled and troubling. Over the years, Wolff and others would hear so many bizarre stories that, at a certain point, they just couldn't believe that they had all happened to one woman. In fact, much of Judith's life reads like a ReganBooks best-seller.
Partly it was her approach: She knew how to be charming, but often in the most highly sexual way. She seemed to raise the level of every confrontation—men were always exposing themselves, or she was being stopped and abused by police. (In 1980 she won a lawsuit in Utah after making an illegal left turn and being strip-searched. In 1990 she was arrested in New York City—and was eventually issued a desk warrant for disorderly conduct, obstruction of government administration, and resisting arrest—after she allegedly leapt to the defense of a cabdriver she felt the police were bullying. She threatened to sue, but dropped the case.) Maureen insists that, no, she's really a person whom trouble finds. "I swear, you get in a cab with my sister and you're on the most frightening ride of your life."
One former friend described the chaos Regan creates around herself this way: "Judith is the sort of person who insists you stay with her, and then you arrive and find out that her ex-boyfriend is also staying in the same room, and there are no sheets, so you have to go buy them, and she tells you to get the best ones and she'll pay you back, and then she won't and she'll say, 'I've noticed that you let people take advantage of you.'"
When she graduated from college, in 1975, she got a job as a secretary at Juilliard and then moved with a boyfriend to Boston, where she worked as a secretary at Harvard. While there, she answered an ad in the paper for a reporter for The National Enquirer. This was 1978, when the Enquirer was interested more in three-headed alien babies and sightings of Elvis than in celebrity weddings. She got the job. And a star was born.
Shortly after she started her Enquirer job, still living in Boston, she met David Buckley, a charming, handsome psychiatrist. According to her, he was a manic-depressive who hit her, frequently. Regan nevertheless loved him, and got pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Patrick, in 1981. She and Buckley broke up, and he reportedly went to jail on drug charges. Sometimes she left her infant son with her mother, but often she took him on the road while she chased her stories.
In the early 80s she relocated to New York. By this point youthful cuteness had given way to beauty, and with her heart-shaped face, natural pout, and enormous dark eyes, she was a heartbreaker.
But her looks did not buy her luck. In 1984 her apartment in Manhattan went up in flames, and she lost everything. She rented a home in Weehawken, New Jersey, and got back together with David Buckley, who was out of jail. She became pregnant with his child, but she started to hemorrhage. She has said that physical abuse caused her to lose her child.
"I sat with her and watched her baby die," says Maureen Regan. "Judy almost died. And I'm the one who had to tell my sister her baby girl died." Judith looked at her sister and said, "Oh." She closed her eyes for a minute and opened them again. "I have to move on," she said.
Regan was not sure what to do next. She loved the tabloid business, but she wanted to stop traveling. In 1987 she approached Simon & Schuster with an idea for a book that—interestingly, for a woman who seemed to be torn between high drama and domesticity—was a study of the average American family, with Ozzie and Harriet as its centerpiece. The editor at Pocket Books, Jack Romanos, didn't want the book, but he sensed that Regan had good instincts. With no publishing experience, she started working for the company as a consultant and soon began churning out a string of hits—celebrity cash cows such as Drew Barrymore's Little Girl Lost and Kathie Lee Gifford's I Can't Believe I Said That!, and then hits by Stern, Limbaugh, and Mike Judge, the Beavis and Butt-head creator—books that made her name as the woman with her finger on the pulse.
Regan's books were review-proof. So was she. In print, she constantly thumbed her nose at the publishing establishment—"They're snobs," she was fond of saying—and they returned the love. Judith chafed at being underestimated by what she saw as the terminally elitist publishing world, which dismissed her success with the notion that if their books appealed to the lowest common denominator they'd have an endless stream of hits, too. "If it were so easy to do what Judith does, then everybody would be doing it," says David Hirshey, executive editor and vice president at HarperCollins. "It's not like other publishers haven't tried. Does anybody think there would be a Paris Hilton autobiography if it weren't for Judith?"
"Look," adds her friend the critic and essayist Stanley Crouch, "if a woman becomes successful in New York and carries herself like Melanie in Gone with the Wind, she'll be forgiven. But if she doesn't find a way to constantly apologize for being successful, she's gonna have problems."
Regan was bringing in piles of money for Simon & Schuster but didn't feel she was being properly compensated. After a few years, she was threatening to quit. There were also rumors that, despite the amount of money her books were making, someone at the top of Simon & Schuster parent Viacom wanted her out. "Somebody in a high place at Viacom, if not the highest place, said, 'Her toxicity was ruining the company—she has to go,'" says another former Regan friend.
In 1994, Rupert Murdoch came courting, with promises of her own imprint and a piece of the action. (Eventually, HarperCollins bought her out for a fat sum and agreed to pay her probably the most generous salary in book publishing, according to industry consultants.) But he also offered what Regan had always craved: a chance to be a star outside hothouse media circles. She'd have a television talk show. She'd have a chance to do movie and TV deals. She would be the Queen of All Media.
"Judith played the damsel in distress, and Rupert liked that very much," adds the onetime friend. "But of course he's no fool. He knew what she could do for him."
And she did it all—while at the same time going through one of the longest, most contentious divorces in New York State history. After moving back to New York, Regan met Robert Kleinschmidt, a then married financier. He had money; she did not have much. "From the beginning she doesn't like him," says a friend. "It's this torrent of negativity, and a torrent of sexual perversion." Maureen Regan testified that Kleinschmidt was stealing his wife's panties. The friend adds, "For most women, I'd think that would kind of be a warning signal."
Regan almost broke up with Kleinschmidt three months before their wedding, when she discovered his affair with a 15-year-old babysitter. They married in 1987, had their daughter, Lara, in 1991, and separated in 1992 when Regan discovered that—surprise!—he was having another affair.
During the divorce proceedings Kleinschmidt requested custody of their daughter and 88 percent of their marital assets. He insisted he could pay only $14,000 a year in child support, despite an annual salary of about $1 million.
Three trials, at least six lawyers, and more than a million dollars later they were divorced. Regan held on to everything, with the possible exception of her sanity. "She was entirely vindicated," says her high-profile matrimonial lawyer, William Beslow, who has also represented Robert De Niro, Demi Moore, and scores of other celebrity divorcés. Still, even though Beslow got her exactly what she had wanted, he and Regan sparred bitterly in the press. Her legal bills were sometimes $70,000 a month, and in 2001 she and a private investigator demanded her files from Beslow's secretary. Beslow turned around and filed his own charges. She had already changed to yet another lawyer when Kleinschmidt appealed one of the verdicts. Winning did not seem to assuage her fury.
"Sometimes throwing pots and pans at one another is a way to continue the conversation," says a former boyfriend. Besides, he adds, "as a lawyer said to me, 'In a divorce, you can see going through two lawyers, maybe even three, … but when you're on your sixth lawyer, it's about you.'"
Divorce is wrenching for almost everyone, but in the melodrama of Judith Regan's life, it was something more. It has informed her worldview and her publishing agenda. Regan could always be counted on to be interested in books "about women who have been victimized," says Kristin Kiser, now the editorial director of Crown, who, while at ReganBooks, had worked on a book called Divorced by Justice, about women hurt by the legal system when they were divorcing. "She looked on it as a calling."
"If you have a book where the theme revolves around a man abandoning a woman," says one agent, "you send it to Judith."
ReganBooks books are many things. Dumb is not one of them. Even if the subject is light, the execution is not. "Nobody has her work ethic," says Kiser. And she puts a lot of herself into the design—sometimes literally. Regan was the cover model on a book called Hunger Point, and in a book called The Paris Apartment she included a photo of herself in a black negligée, one hand to her breast, staring seductively at the camera. She's also starred in ads, most famously wrapped in a towel and lying in bed, with the tagline "I love to read in bed."
She is known for paying relatively puny advances (Tommy Franks's $5 million notwithstanding), and for mocking colleagues who overpay. But she sells books, and authors tend to like that. Notes former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, whose memoir, The Lost Son, was published by ReganBooks in 2001, "She is brash, very assertive, extremely demanding, and talks like a man…. But you know what? I've run the largest police departments in the country, I've run the largest jail. Sometimes it takes a person like that to get things done." Kerik still speaks of Regan with tremendous fondness—she cared for his sister's children when the sister was ill. Rumors of an affair abounded during the project, but both Regan and Kerik denied them. "When we met she said to me, 'I'm not going to promise you a lot of money, I'm not going to promise you a best-seller. I promise you'll have a good book.' And, look, it turns into a best-seller." Kerik's memoir came out right after 9/11—when Kerik was everywhere in the news—thanks to Regan's insistence that he keep his November 2001 publication date.
Although pushing the New York City police commissioner to meet his deadline so that his book could be pegged to the most devastating terrorist attack in American history might not have been in good taste, good taste has never been Regan's forte. When Berkeley sociology professor Bob Blauner spent four years working on a serious and considered book about men mourning their mothers, Our Mothers' Spirits, it was his bad fortune that just before it came out the Princess of Wales died. Regan talked him into writing an essay about her death as the book's foreword—despite the fact that, as Blauner admits, he didn't actually know which country she was a princess in—and then insisted that the cover illustration of the Madonna and Child be replaced with a photo of Diana and her boys. When top management protested that this was in bad taste, Regan became apoplectic. "Everyone in this place is a pussy but me!" she shouted at an editorial meeting about the project, and the book was published as she demanded. The big chains such as Barnes & Noble initially hesitated to carry it, then relented, but by that time the publicity had been so scathing, there seemed to be almost a boycott of the book. It sold fewer than 3,000 copies.
Still, Regan does take risks; she gets enthusiastic about books no one else will touch. Former New York City Ballet dancer Toni Bentley's The Surrender—an intelligent, funny memoir that happens to be almost entirely about anal sex—was reportedly rejected by a dozen publishers before it reached Regan, who loved it. "She is my heroine," says Bentley. "I felt like she trusted me as a writer completely. No requests to tone it down, make it more politically correct, or take out any of the many … graphic details or spiritual yearnings."
Regan has probably had more public brawls with authors than any other publisher. She lambasted Madonna for stealing what she claimed was her idea for a book on erotica; she spanked Monica Lewinsky in the gossip columns, implying that Lewinsky was stringing her along on an offer to buy her tell-all book. Marla Maples was another target of her venom (Regan canceled her memoir), and she famously feuded with respected authors Peter Manso and Ellen Hawkes over their ultimately unpublished Margaux Hemingway biography.
One notorious story of Regan's Machiavellian business dealings has made the rounds. At the height of speculation about whether or not Hillary Clinton would run for the Senate, Regan called Washington speechwriter Peggy Noonan's agent, Joni Evans. (Noonan had written a critical article about Clinton in The Wall Street Journal.) Regan asked Evans if Noonan could write a book about Hillary in three months. (Typical of Regan. As author Peter Lance put it, "She runs her imprint like a newspaper.") Evans and Noonan agreed; a price was set. Noonan turned in the manuscript on time, to deafening editorial silence. After weeks of delay, a 14-page list of criticisms arrived on Evans's desk. Toward the end of the letter, Regan stipulated that, even if all the noted problems were addressed, the book was such a disappointment that she wasn't planning on paying the author the remainder of her advance. Evans immediately found two other publishers willing to buy the book and pay accordingly. After she informed Regan of the other offers, Evans received a letter stating she would be sued. Eventually, the two sides agreed that Evans would not take the book elsewhere if Regan accepted the manuscript as submitted and paid the full amount immediately. The book, The Case Against Hillary Clinton, published by Regan, came out in March 2000, quickly hit No. 7 on the New York Times best-seller list, and ultimately jumped to No. 1 (where it was tied with Tuesdays with Morrie). "She's her own law," says a publishing insider familiar with the story. "Regan has never paid attention to the rules, and in some ways it's worked for her, and then again, it hasn't."
"There are people who, if they didn't have a pretty face, they'd have a bounty on their head," says a former boyfriend, also in publishing. "Judith used to say to me, 'If I were a man and I were this aggressive, everyone would praise me.' And I was like, 'Excuse me, if you were a man and you acted the way you do, some guy would knock your teeth out.'"
If Regan is theatrical in her author dealings, she is positively operatic with her underlings. In the last two years, at least a dozen people have left her employ—pretty impressive for an imprint that consists of only six or seven staffers. "She is," says a woman who has worked happily for other demanding bosses but lasted with Regan less than a year, "a destroyer of souls."
Ex-staffers talk about strange stress-related illnesses and nervous breakdowns; one person became so overwhelmed after working at ReganBooks he left New York City. Another, former Rolling Stone writer Debby Bull—who was also nursing a broken heart at the time—moved to Montana and took up canning.
"You have no idea how crazy she is. None," says one former editor. "Many of us who worked there still get together years later. We became very close, because you had to stick together to survive it."
Regan doesn't seem to have a sense of the boundary, however fuzzy, between work and life. She left topless photos of herself in a table drawer in her office; she also stored voluminous records for her divorce in a closet where anyone could peruse them—and some did. On the set of a later incarnation of her Fox television show, called Judith Regan Tonight, she crossed the work-life boundary one too many times. In 2001, she accused members of the production team of stealing her cell phone and jewelry, and somehow strong-armed Kerik—or, if Kerik's version is correct, someone who worked for Kerik—into sending detectives to the houses of five of the crew and rousting them out of bed in the middle of the night to question them. The show was canceled a year later.
At HarperCollins, Regan is fiercely competitive with colleagues—particularly C.E.O. Jane Friedman. "She and Friedman hate each other," says one former editor. "So when she had to report to Jane, she'd call all the editorial assistants into the office, turn on the speakerphone, have this charming, polite conversation, then hang up the phone and say, 'Well, that was a courtesy call. Now we'll do what we want.'"
She is also fiercely competitive with her employees. She is, according to innumerable reports, terrified that someone other than herself might get credit for a good decision. Angry Blonde, Regan's best-selling book by the rapper Eminem, was actually bought for $450,000 by a very young ReganBooks editor known for her savvy on hip-hop culture; she has since left to start her own small imprint. "But if you asked Judith, it was all because of her," said one editor familiar with the deal. "Here she is, this middle-aged woman, and she needs everyone to think she's the authority on youth culture, but she's not so in touch."
She has a complicated relationship with women on her staff. After one especially lovely, thin woman, hired fresh out of college, complained that she was being sexually harassed by another staffer, Regan instituted a dress code: no spaghetti straps, no short skirts. Yet a former friend insists Regan's actions don't stem from envy. "To be jealous, Judith would have to see herself in competition, and she doesn't. I don't think she's very interested in that kind of attention—and she gets too much of it anyway. To her credit, I think she wants the young women around her not to stoop so low."
Often, she seems to want to foment conflict, as if she were arranging toy soldiers on a wee battlefield. At one point in the late 90s, when a young (straight) editor complained that a gay superior was coming on to him, Regan immediately reassigned the editor to work directly for the superior. The editor quit.
And politically correct she is not. Many staffers—and other colleagues—had epithets according to their sexual orientation or ethnicity: "I was the lesbian cunt," says one former competitor. "Then there was the black cunt." When she got mad, people were called "fucking retards" and "fucking idiots"; if she got really mad, she'd accuse people of being either "fags" or "on drugs" or, preferably, both. "Judith was always insisting to me I was gay—and if some issue came up that involved women, I knew nothing, because—she'd shout at me—'You've never slept with a woman!' And I was like, O.K., whatever!" says Dana Isaacson, now an editor at Random House.
"She'd seem so normal at some points," he adds wistfully. "Then, you know, the next minute she'd be screaming about the faggot mafia."
But in some ways being screamed at by Regan was considerably less unsettling than being her chum. "She's a raunchy personality, and when she feels comfortable and wants to bond, her bizarre way of doing it is to get crude," says one former editor. "Maybe she enjoys making you uncomfortable? Or maybe it's her weird way of bonding with other women?" At one point Regan told this particular editor, "I'm on so many hormones I could hump the doorknob." "Or," said the editor, "she'd say something like, 'My clit is this big'—and hold out her fingers."
There is no question she rules by intimidation. "I know this sounds ridiculous, but there was always … this vague sense she might actually do physical damage," says another former editor, who recalls this slightly alarming tale: When Arsenio Hall lost his talk show in 1994, she campaigned for the slot. "When [a Fox executive] finally told her she wasn't getting the job, we all heard her screaming in her office. 'You know why? Because he has a small dick, and he's afraid I'm going to eat it. And then I'm gonna eat his testicles. Then I'm going to eat into his body cavity … ' It was the most incredible thing I'd heard. But this was my first job out of college. I remember thinking, Huh, maybe this is the way things are in media."
Few employees have lasted more than a year. Those who have—such as editorial director Cal Morgan and managing editor Cathy Jones, who are married to each other—"have no central nervous system left," says one ex-staffer. "If it weren't for Cathy, the place would fall apart. But their life is that place."
In spring 2003 things became so bad that three of Regan's staffers—Lisa Hamilton, Renee Iwaszkiewicz, and Conor Risch—walked out, but not before first going to HarperCollins's Human Resources Department and threatening a sexual-harassment suit. They received an undisclosed sum of money upon signing a confidentiality agreement. At that point, a HarperCollins executive "was assigned to essentially babysit Judith," an editor told me.
Despite the Sturm und Drang, there were several big pluses to working for Regan. "First, she would give you all sorts of responsibility that would take years to get at a normal company," says one editor. "Of course, you would probably fail, because you didn't know what you were doing, but at least she gave you the chance." And, second, "you could get anything done within HarperCollins's corporate structure very quickly. If someone wasn't hurrying up with contracts or whatever, all you had to say was 'I'll have Judith call you,' and the thing would get done, because they didn't want to deal with her."
Adds Isaacson, who admired her at the same time he couldn't abide her, "This is her secret: she creates chaos and she is never panicked herself. And then she rides her bulldozers over all the bodies and it allows her to do things that other people have problems getting accomplished. It's very effective."
And what does Regan have to say about this? She enlisted her friends to speak for her. According to their reports, she can be incredibly generous: she gave one assistant a diamond Chopard watch, and, says her sister Maureen, often urged staff who wanted to have children not to worry about taking time off. "She … will go to bat for someone she believes in," says Maureen in an e-mail. "If you lie, cheat, steal, don't do your job, force her to do it for you over and over, (which translates to her as less time with her kids), after a while she will lose her patience. Who wouldn't? In fact, she endures a lot more than I ever would—from authors, staff, men etc. In fact, as far as I'm concerned her problem is that she is too nice and people often take advantage."
"Frankly," says pollster Doug Schoen, who published On the Campaign Trail: The Long Road of Presidential Politics, 1860-2004 with ReganBooks last July, "she has had to tolerate some staff members I would never have tolerated, simply because it is very difficult to attract high-quality people to the publishing business at this point." Even a former friend gives her credit for good instincts: "She deals with the morons in the book business in a completely abusive way, so people focus on how abusive she is and not on the fact that she is usually right."
Friends and enemies alike speculate about what will happen to a woman who lives to fight when there are no more bodies standing: in publishing, she doesn't have much more to prove. Her recent television successes may propel her further into the entertainment industry.
And she may feel able to leave the book world, now that her children are a little older. Regan is seen by many who know her as a doting and very loving mother.
Patrick is universally considered a lovely and intelligent young man. He studied mechanical engineering at M.I.T. and is now doing graduate work in California. Lara, a top student and class president at a Catholic girls' school in Manhattan, is said to resemble her mother in looks and, um, moxie. Says one top executive at HarperCollins, "A few years ago—I think she was around nine—I met her at a company party. She asked me, 'What's your position?' She seemed satisfied with my answer. I was a little afraid that if I told her I was a copy editor or something she'd walk away from me."
Regan is not driven by the desire for wealth per se; money, for her, is just a way of keeping score. "She must be the richest person in New York without a house," says her sister Maureen. "She's in between apartments now, living on the Upper East Side. She won't decorate. You go into her apartment, the television doesn't work, she doesn't have dining-room chairs. I go there and I'm like, 'Judy, I live better than you do.'"
She has claimed, repeatedly, that she will never marry again, but Regan observers aren't so sure. "She'd like to get a man who's strong enough to be a guy, with all that implies, and take care of business," says a former beau. "But the nature of her being is: that would blow up in her face. Because she'll try to run him down. If you stand up to her, you've got to leave."
And there are even some signs, however small, that with fewer battles left to wage the fighter wouldn't be averse to peace. At a recent surprise 50th-birthday party, organized by her ex-assistant Angelica Canales, she couldn't get over the fact that old friends from various times in her life—as far back as when she worked at Harvard—turned up; she had never, according to her sister, had a party for any of the usual rites of passage—babies, marriage. "She called me up and said, 'Do you think everyone had fun, Maureen? Really? You think so?'"
"We recently went to Canyon Ranch together. She gave it to me as a gift for my daughter's first birthday," continues Maureen. "You have to understand, my sister never takes vacations. But she said to me, 'I need to take time—I'm gonna crash and burn.' For a couple of days it was great. We laughed, and we walked and hiked." Judith was in a great mood; she'd just bought herself a new BMW with all the requisite bells and whistles. "And she's like, Maureen, look, I have controls to my own feet! There were bottles flying all over the place, food all over. She's totally full of life, happy my daughter was there. In the past she wouldn't have been like that—having a life, having some fun. I think pieces of Judy are coming back. It's like there's Judith, and there's Judy. I understand Judith and respect her and have the utmost respect for things she's accomplished. But I prefer hanging out with Judy."
Judith Newman has profiled Sumner Redstone, Rosie O'Donnell, and Bonnie Fuller for V.F. Her recent book You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother will be released in paperback by Miramax Books this spring.
Illustration by TIM SHEAFFER

Question: who wrote the devil and miss regan

Answer: Judith Newman

Question: which publisher had the highest profit ratio in 2004

Answer: HarperCollins

Question: how many books did reganbooks have on the new york times best seller list

Answer: three

Question: when was the devil and miss regan published

Answer: August 2004

Question: in what year did reganbooks have the highest profit ratio at harpercollins

Answer: 2004

Question: what magazine listed the devil and miss regan on its best seller list

Answer: New York Times

Question: what is the title of the 2005 vanity fair novel by judith newman

Answer: The Devil and Miss Regan


The Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Preston Free Public Library, rebranded in 2020 as The Harris, is a Grade I-listed museum building in Preston, Lancashire, England. Founded by Edmund Harris in 1877, it still operates as a local history and fine art museum.

 History
In the 19th century, it became legal to raise money for libraries by local taxation, and the town of Preston wanted a grand museum and library for its inhabitants. From 1850, local people held fund-raising events; and in 1877 Edmund Robert Harris, a Preston lawyer, left in his will £300,000 to establish a trust and support a public library, museum and art gallery with Preston Corporation.

In 1879, the first Preston lending library was set up in the Town Hall basement, while a public museum was set up on Cross Street, opening 1 May 1880. Success led the council to erect a new building for both. Work started on the museum in 1882 during the Preston Guild, and it officially opened in 1893.

Design
The building was designed by a local architect, James Hibbert, who chose a Neo-Classical style. For the 1880s, this was in some ways contrary to the Gothic Revival style which was popular at the time and features in numerous contemporary buildings in Preston,  including the old Town Hall which stood on the western side of the Harris.

Exterior
The building's exterior reflects Hibbert's vision of a neo-classicism through "“simplicity, symmetry of plan, truthfulness of expression and refinement of detail”. Unlike other public buildings designed in this style (such as the British Museum in London and the Konzerthaus in Berlin), Hibbert's design does not feature steps leading up from the Flag Market but instead has ground-level entrances on each side of the building.

A pediment dominates the front of the building and features a sculpture based upon Raphael's painting The School of Athens. Interpreting Hibbert's design fell to London sculptor Edwin Roscoe Mullins and features the central figure of the Ancient Athenian general Pericles, surrounded by twelve other men arranged symmetrically to either side. The sculpture is considered Mullins' principal work. Beneath the pediment is the inscription To Literature, Arts and Science. There are further inscriptions along the sides, and on the lantern tower a quotation in Ancient Greek from Pericles' Funeral Oration.

Supporting the pediment are six Ionic fluted columns leading down to a raised portico overlooking the Flag Market.

Interior
The building's interior is dominated by a central hall rising over 120 feet from the ground floor to the ceiling of the lantern tower.  As well as the ground floor, there are three upper floors with balconies opening up onto the central hall, and collection halls and exhibition spaces on each floor.

The interior design features classical influences from Ancient Greece, Assyria and Egypt, including columns and mosaic floors, and copies of Classical and Renaissance sculpture representing the “whole range and history of the world’s greatest achievements in art”. Only the Greek and Assyrian friezes on the upper floors and the copy of Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise on the ground floor remain of the original sculptures.

 Collections
The Harris collections cover fine art, decorative art, costume, textiles and history including collections on archaeology and local history. The museum has a permanent history gallery called Discover Preston which covers Preston's history but also includes a Discovery Room featuring the wider collections. Highlights of the Discovery Room include a display of the complete skeleton discovered in 1970, of the 13,500-year-old Poulton Elk, a skeleton of an Ice Age elk with two embedded man-made barbed points, the earliest relic of human occupation of Lancashire.Harris Museum: The Poulton Elk.

The fine art collection includes over 800 oil paintings featuring work by Richard Ansdell, George Frederick Watts, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud, Ivon Hitchens and Graham Sutherland as well as local artists Anthony Devis and Reginald Aspinwall.Reginald Aspinwall's Paintings, BBC Your Paintings, accessed April 2013 The decorative art collection includes collections of British ceramics and glass, and are displayed in the Ceramics and Glass Gallery.  In addition there is a contemporary art programme of national and international artists, touring shows and in-house exhibitions.

A Foucault pendulum hangs in the central foyer, through all the floors, over a butterfly-shaped plate marked with the hours of the day. As a result of the rotation of the Earth, this functions as a decorative and reasonably-accurate clock. The building is also decorated with a number of plaster casts of classical friezes throughout the central atrium and a 19th-century copy of the Baptistery doors from Florence is located on the ground floor. These were part of the original design scheme by the architect James Hibbert.

 Library
The building also houses Preston City's Public Library, which is run by Lancashire County Council. The first librarian of the Harris Free Public Library was a William Bramwell who retired in 1916 aged eighty-one. The Harris library holds important book collections including the Shepherd Collection donated to Preston by Dr Richard Shepherd in 1761, with additions funded by the Shepherd bequest, local studies material, nineteenth-century journals, rare books and art books. Also the Spencer collection of illustrated children's books and chapbooks.A Catalogue of the Spencer Collection of Early Children's Books and Chapbooks, Presented to the Harris Public Library, Preston, By Mr. J. H. Spencer, 1967 At the time of the opening of the Harris, William Bramwell was also the librarian of the Dr Shepherd Library which found a home at the Harris having been located in various buildings and institutions across the town.Convey, John (1993).The Harris Free Public Library and Museum, Preston 1893-1993, p.37, Lancashire County Books, Preston.

Gallery

Proposed renovations
Following a successful bid for support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, in October 2020 plans were submitted for a £10.7M renovation and restoration project called #HarrisYourPlace with the aim "to establish the Harris as the UK’s first blended museum, art gallery and library".  The project is said to include "much-needed conservation works" on the roof, stonework and basement to help address the building's "long-standing damp problem". It will also reveal some of the Harris’ original architectural details which have been hidden by previous building works, including reopening an original entrance way to improve accessibility. A new lift and toilet on the ground floor will improve the building's accessibility to disabled visitors, and a new staircase will replace the existing fire exit stairs.

These proposed works are in addition to a £150K Children's Place scheme scheduled to open in 2024, which will redevelop the children's library space and improve facilities for school groups and families.

Appearances in media and products
The Harris features in the Preston version of Monopoly, launched in October 2020.

See also
Listed buildings in Preston, Lancashire

References

External links

Category:Cultural infrastructure completed in 1893
Category:Art museums and galleries in Lancashire
Category:Decorative arts museums in England
Category:Grade I listed buildings in Lancashire
Category:Grade I listed museum buildings
Category:Libraries in Lancashire
Category:Local museums in Lancashire
Category:Museums in Preston
Category:Neoclassical architecture in England
Category:Textile museums in the United Kingdom
Category:Public libraries in Lancashire
Category:Art museums established in 1893
Category:1893 establishments in England
Category:Grade I listed art galleries
Category:Grade I listed library buildings
Category:Preston, Lancashire

A pediment dominates the front of the building and features a sculpture based upon Raphael 's painting The School of Athens .

Interpreting Hibbert 's design fell to London sculptor Edwin Roscoe Mullins and features the central figure of the Ancient Athenian general Pericles , surrounded by twelve other men arranged symmetrically to either side .

An important sculptor on account of the liveliness and individuality of his figures, but the majority of whose works are unfortunately not so accessible. His principal work is the pedimental group on the Harris Art Gallery and Library in Preston, shown above. Some 13 full figures in stone, centred on Pericles, all male and classical in the extreme. The poses and drapes of the figures include allusions to particular Greek statues. But the figures, unlike classical Greek statues, are individualistic and have expressions, above all the fourth figure from left, the first standing one, who cranes his neck to engage with the figures to his left. Roscoe Mullins drapery is Roman rather than Greek, but this may reflect the nature of the stone he is using.
Also important among Roscoe Mullins work are the five panels on the Croydon Town Hall and Library, depicting Health (shown on this page), Music, Recreation (on this page), Religion and Study. In each case a lovely central female figure with complex blouse or light cloak and a simpler, heavier skirt below, is seated in a roundel flanked on each side by two or three smaller figures. The children are particularly individualistic, and their poses, gestures and expressions show a waywardness, even wilfulness, that contrasts with the calmer central figures.
More minor architectural works by Roscoe Mullins include the cherubs holding the shield of the Fine Art Society building in Bond Street, and further cherubic things on the front of the former Bank of Scotland, no 3-4 Bishopsgate Street, neither particularly characterful.
My Punishment is Greater than I can Bear.
Apart from this, there is a statue of William Barnes, the poet, in Dorchester, and a couple of ideal figures in Glasgow in the City Art Gallery. He exhibited almost 40 works at the Royal Academy, from 1873, and at various other venues, including portrait busts, ideal figures, and children at play. These include some tending to the sentimental - Sisters, Robin Goodfellow, Non Angli sed Angeli, Love's Token, and so forth; religious - Bless me, Even me also, O my Father, and some classical works recalling the Harris Art Gallery pediment figures, for example Comus, and the rather nicely posed male nude entitled My Punishment is Greater than I can Bear, shown here.
Study group from Croydon Town Hall & Library.
Top of page
Sculpture pages
Home
Visitors to this page since 13 Mar 2014: 4,968

Question: the pediment in the front of the building is based on which raphael painting

Answer: The School of Athens

Question: who designed the pediment in the school of athens

Answer: Edwin Roscoe Mullins

who designed the pediment in the school of athens

Question: what dominates the front of the building

Answer: pediment

what dominates the front of the building

Question: who is the central figure in Hibbert's design

Answer: Pericles

who is the central figure in Hibbert's design

Question: how many men are on either side of pericles

Answer: twelve

how many men are on either side of pericles

Question: who painted the school of athens

Answer: Raphael

Question: in what city was edwin roscoe mullins born

Answer: London

in what city was edwin roscoe mullins born

Harris Museum: The Poulton Elk.

The museum has a permanent history gallery called Discover Preston which covers Preston 's history but also includes a Discovery Room featuring the wider collections .

Highlights of the Discovery Room include a display of the complete skeleton discovered in 1970 , of the 13,500 - year - old Poulton Elk , a skeleton of an Ice Age elk with two embedded man - made barbed points , the earliest relic of human occupation of Lancashire .

EventsExhibitions
Desirable Body
Hanover Project, Hanover Building, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, PR1 2XQ
Archived EventsExhibitionsPaintings on Loan
Laura Knight: A Panoramic View
Four Laura Knight paintings from the Harris Fine Art collection go on loan...
ExhibitionsPaintings on Loan
Patti Mayor: ‘The Half-Timer’
Grundy Art Gallery is working in collaboration with Gallery Oldham and the Harris to develop a programme of activity and…
Archived Events
Wellbeing Day at Lancaster City Museum
Venue: Lancaster City Museum Free sketching workshop and more...
Archived EventsPaintings on Loan
REGINALD ASPINWALL: a troubled landscape
Venue: Lancaster City Museum This exhibition is the first to open with several loans from the Harris on display…
Archived Events
Preston’s African Caribbean Stories
Venue: UCLan PR1 Gallery: This Harris in the City exhibition is the first of a number that will take place…
Archived Events
‘Expressive Sign Making’ Hand lettering workshop with Lisa Wigham for adults (over 18 years)
In response to Bob and Roberta Smith's work Lisa, a traditional Sign Painter shares skills from this tradition.
ExhibitionsArchived Events
Preston City of Sanctuary - Covid Memories Project
This project was aimed specifically at children and young people from refugee and asylum seeking families living in Preston.
Archived Events
The Artful Line
The Artful Line is one of four new spring exhibitions. Preston artists Gavin Renshaw, Kathryn Poole and Anita George have…
ExhibitionsArchived Events
More T'North
A Contemporary art exhibition by the Harris Young Producers - proving there's more to the North than thick accents and…

Question: what is the name of the permanent history gallery at the harris museum

Answer: Discover Preston

Question: when was the skeleton of the poulton elk discovered

Answer: 1970

Question: what is the name of the 13,500-year-old skeleton discovered in 1970

Answer: Poulton Elk

Question: how old was the poulton elk skeleton

Answer: 13,500

Question: what is the name of the skeleton discovered in 1970 at the harris museum

Answer: 13,500-year-old Poulton Elk

Question: what is discover preston

Answer: permanent history gallery

Question: what type of animal was the poulton elk skeleton

Answer: Ice Age elk

what type of animal was the poulton elk skeleton

Question: what animal was the poulton elk skeleton

Answer: elk

what animal was the poulton elk skeleton

As a result of the rotation of the Earth , this functions as a decorative and reasonably - accurate clock .

The building is also decorated with a number of plaster casts of classical friezes throughout the central atrium and a 19th - century copy of the Baptistery doors from Florence is located on the ground floor .

This Grade I listed building opened in 1893 and houses a treasure trove of art and intriguing objects. It’s the largest gallery space in Lancashire and is best known for its local history display, and collections of ceramics, glass, fashion, and textiles.
Many of exhibitions at Harris Museum and Art Gallery change every few months. Those referred to in this article relate to our last visit in September 2015.
Entering the building we made our way to the first floor. Discover Preston is here and is the museum’s local history gallery. It’s divided into four zones; Preston at the Crossroads, the Discovery Room, the Social and Commercial Hub, and What Makes Preston Special?
One of the most interesting exhibits we saw was the Poulton Elk. This 13,000 year old elk skeleton was found by chance in 1970 when an old bungalow in Poulton-le-Fylde was being demolished. Fragments of weapons also found at the site are the earliest evidence of human settlement in North West England.
Other exhibits in the Discover Preston gallery explored a diverse range of topics including the history of Preston Docklands, the collapse of Preston Old Bank, rayon production at Courthalds’ Red Scar Works factory, Preston Market, Horrockses Mill, Preston Caribbean Carnival, and the Jacobites in Preston.
The Ceramics and Glass Gallery is on the first floor balcony. Exhibits explored the ways ceramics have been made and how ceramic production in the UK developed from the seventeenth century onwards. Individual displays showcased Staffordshire figures, Wedgwood, and English porcelain. The glass section boasts the largest collection of perfume bottles in the UK.
The second floor houses three galleries; Special Exhibitions, Costume, and Art.
At the time of our visit the Special Exhibitions gallery was hosting A Green and Pleasant Land? The exhibition showcased art inspired by Preston’s landscapes and included works by Anthony Devis, Thomas Wade, and Norman Stevens. The theme extended onto the stairway where there was a display of contemporary rural photography by students of Myerscough College.
The Costume Gallery is also on the second floor. Again this gallery hosts exhibitions that change throughout the year. When we visited it was hosting Style & Substance, an exhibition showing how British fashion changed between 1880 and the 1930s.
Unfortunately at the time of our visit the Art Gallery was closed for urgent repairs. It had been scheduled to showcase an exhibition of the works of Victorian painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts.
The second floor balcony also featured some interesting exhibits. One display housed a collection of early spectacles while others featured silver card cases and oriental ivories.
The fourth and topmost floor of the Harris Museum is the Egyptian Balcony. Its walls are adorned with murals of Egyptian sites painted by John Somerscales. This area is not normally open to the public and can only be visited as part of a guided tour. A small fee applies.
The ground floor of the museum houses the Harris Library and the Museum Café. The Museum Café is one of the most unique places to eat in Preston. While sat at your table you can admire the Foucault pendulum, a unique device that demonstrates the rotation of the Earth. Another wall is adorned with a bronze cast of the doors from the east side of the Florence Baptistery.
Facilities at the Harris Museum include free wireless internet access, lift to all floors, and accessible toilets.
The Harris Museum is open Monday to Saturday from 10 am (11 am Monday) to 5 pm. It is closed Sundays and bank holidays.
Admission to the museum and all exhibitions is free.
The Harris Museum boasts a fantastic city centre location on Market Square, just off Fishergate and between Preston Guild Hall and the St George’s Shopping Centre.
Preston Bus Station is just a couple of hundred yards away. Preston Train Station can be reached on foot in about five minutes.
The nearest car parks are at Preston Bus Station, the St George’s Shopping Centre, and Preston Market.

Question: where are the baptistery doors located

Answer: Florence

Question: what function does the pendulum serve as

Answer: clock

what function does the pendulum serve as

Question: what causes the clock to function as an accurate clock

Answer: rotation of the Earth

Question: what causes the clock to function as a decorative and reasonably-accurate clock

Answer: the rotation of the Earth

Question: where is the copy of the baptistery doors from florence located

Answer: ground floor

Question: what type of casts are in the central atrium

Answer: plaster casts

what type of casts are in the central atrium

Question: plaster casts of what are in the central atrium

Answer: classical friezes

plaster casts of what are in the central atrium

Question: what functions as a result of the rotation of the earth

Answer: decorative and reasonably-accurate clock

Proposed renovations Following a successful bid for support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund , in October 2020 plans were submitted for a £ 10.7 M renovation and restoration project called # HarrisYourPlace with the aim " to establish the Harris as the UK ’s first blended museum , art gallery and library " .

Bosses submit £10m plans to transform Preston's Harris Museum
Ambitious plans to ‘restore and reimagine’ a Preston landmark have been submitted to planners.
Bosses say the £10.7m scheme to revitalise Preston’s Harris museum, art gallery and library will mean the building will “continue to be a source of inspiration, creativity and enjoyment”.
The project, dubbed #HarrisYourPlace, will see the Grade I listed landmark become a focus for creativity and making, digital technology and learning for local people.
The proposals include works to reveal some of the Harris’ original architectural details, which have previously been hidden.
If approved, much-needed conservation works on the roof and basement will help to address the building’s long-standing damp problem, which poses a future threat to the Harris’ collections.
The project seeks to establish the Harris as the UK’s first blended museum, art gallery and library, with collections on display not only in gallery areas but also around the building, such as in the café, shop and newly-created spaces for children, young people and community groups.
Proposed changes to the layout are designed to encourage more visitors of all ages and backgrounds to the Harris, which already welcomes just under half a million visitors per year.
The plans include accentuating an original entrance way to improve accessibility and introducing a new internal lift and staircase, replacing the aged fire exit stairs and helping visitors to move more easily between different floors and spaces.
A new Changing Places toilet on the ground floor will improve the building’s accessibility to disabled visitors.
The alterations to the internal layout would mean that more of the Harris’ extensive collections of paintings, textiles, sculpture, photography, historic books and digital art - many of which are internationally significant - can be displayed.
Widespread consultation with local people, community groups and partners has shaped the proposals both for the conservation of the building and long-term vision for the Harris as a learning, cultural and community space fit for the 21st century.
A bid for £4.5m from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to enable delivery the project will be made in November. It will be backed by £3.6m of funding from Preston City Council; Lancashire County Council; the Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City Deal; Arts Council England and local supporters including members of the public and the Friends of the Harris.
Opened in 1893, the Grade I listed building is owned and managed by Preston City Council.
Melanie Close, CEO of Disability Equality North West, said: “The Harris has been a treasured focus for cultural, social and civic life in Preston and indeed for Lancashire at large for more than 127 years.
“Consultation has confirmed the pride that people feel towards not only this iconic building and its collections but also the role it plays as a cornerstone of Preston’s identity.
“We now have an opportunity to restore, reimagine and improve access to the building with these bold and ambitious plans.
“Investment in the building and careful consideration about its future use for all of the people in our community is essential if the Harris is to continue to be a source of inspiration, creativity and enjoyment for another 127 years.”
Lancashire County Councillor Peter Buckley, cabinet member for community and cultural services, said: “It is hugely important for Lancashire that The Harris maintains its central role within our county’s rich heritage. Reaching such a major milestone for our iconic Grade I listed attraction is very positive news for Lancashire’s cultural economy.”
Works on the building will start in October 2021 if both the planning application and The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England support to deliver the project are approved.
For more information about the Harris, visit www.theharris.org.uk.
Thanks for reading. If you value what we do and are able to support us, a digital subscription is just £1 per month for the first two months. Try us today by clicking here

Question: what is the name of the planned renovation and restoration project in 2020

Answer: #HarrisYourPlace

Question: how much is the harris your place project expected to cost

Answer: £10.7M

Question: when is the harris your place going to be finished

Answer: October 2020

Question: who won the bid for support for renovations at harris your place

Answer: National Lottery Heritage Fund

Question: what is the name of the proposed £10.7m renovation and restoration project in

Answer: HarrisYourPlace

Question: what is the aim of the project

Answer: to establish the Harris

Question: who won the bid for support for renovations at harris

Answer: the National Lottery Heritage Fund

Question: when is the harris museum going to be renovated

Answer: 2020

when is the harris museum going to be renovated

These proposed works are in addition to a £ 150 K Children 's Place scheme scheduled to open in 2024 , which will redevelop the children 's library space and improve facilities for school groups and families .

The Harris Charity has chosen to make its largest ever grant to help provide a new Children’s Space at the Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library, as part of the city centre venue’s £10m development plans.Advertisement
£150,000 will be used to support the scheme to redevelop the children’s library space and improve facilities for school groups and families.
Read more: The Harris reopens museum and galleries after lockdown
Based on consultation with children’s library users, and a trial during 2019, it will offer children’s books alongside art and history objects from the museum collections as well as inventive and playful interpretation and digital access.
It is scheduled to open in 2024 following a two year construction period during which the library service and family activities will be delivered around the city.
Despite both being connected to Edmund Robert Harris’ legacy to Preston, the Harris Charity and the Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library have not worked together before now. The grant is being made to the Friends of the Harris charity, which supports the museum, art gallery and library’s service to the public.
Edwin Booth, Chair of the Harris Charity Trustees said: “My Great Great Grandfather Edwin Henry Booth was a founding trustee of the Harris Orphanage whose sale in 1985 created the Harris Charity which supports young persons in difficulty and also helps ensure that their talents are not constrained through lack of funds.
Read more: Friends of the Harris charity receives £1,000 funding boost for museum redevelopment
“Edwin Henry had been an orphan boy at the age of 11 and he was keen to encourage disadvantaged youngsters in all walks of life to find fulfilment. The Harris trustees and I are proud to provide funds to help the Friends of the Harris support the creation of a place of discovery and learning for children and their families in the iconic Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library building as part of the #HarrisYourPlace project.”
The latest news in your area can be seen below
Greta Krypczyk-Oddy, Chair of the Friends of the Harris, said: “The Harris Charity are making a huge difference for Preston children by helping the Harris to create a fantastic new space for families and schools.
“We are very grateful to the Harris Charity trustees who will help to revitalise the Grade I listed Harris for the next 100 years, with spaces and services which meet the needs of Preston people.
“All of the money that we raise locally helps us to generate larger national grants which will ensure the full £10 million #HarrisYourPlace project goes ahead. This grant is a huge step forward.”
Read more: See the latest Preston news and headlines
What do you think of the new children’s space? Let us know in the comments below

Question: when is the children's place scheme planned to open

Answer: 2024

Question: how much is the children's place scheme projected to cost

Answer: £150K

Question: what is slated to open in 2024

Answer: £150K Children's Place scheme

Question: who is benefiting from the children's place scheme

Answer: school groups and families

Question: what will the new children's place scheme redevelop

Answer: children's library space

Question: what is the purpose of the children's place scheme

Answer: will redevelop the children's library space

what is the purpose of the children's place scheme

Question: what is the name of the scheme to redevelop the children's library space

Answer: £150K Children's Place

Question: what is the name of the £150k scheme to redevelop the children's library space

Answer: Children's Place scheme