Short answers, pulled from the story.
James Harper and his brother John started their book publishing business in New York City in 1817. They called the firm J. & J. Harper before adding two other brothers to the partnership.
Harper & Brothers launched Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1850, Harper's Weekly starting in June 1857, Harper's Bazar on the 2nd of November 1867, and Harper's Young People in 1879. These publications established the company as a major media force in New York City.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired Harper & Row in 1987 and subsequently bought William Collins, Sons in 1990. The names of these two national publishing houses combined along with their respective icons to create HarperCollins.
Harper has published many significant authors including Mark Twain, Harper Lee, E. B. White, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Herman Melville, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula K. Le Guin, Richard Wright, Thornton Wilder, Zane Grey, Howard Pyle, Margaret Wise Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, and James Baldwin.
Harper's Weekly was absorbed by The Independent in 1916 and that publication later merged with The Outlook in 1928. This sequence marked the end of Harper's direct ownership of the weekly magazine title.