Harcourt Brace

Harcourt Brace is presented in Andy Warhol’s diary as the publisher and supplier of Popism, a business relationship measured in orders, delays, payments, and books passed on to others. The entries trace both the practical work of obtaining the book and Warhol’s changing attitude toward distributing copies as costs rose.

Publisher and Supplier

In March 1980, Warhol recorded buying eight copies of Popism for $94.56, then, four days later, buying a hundred copies from Harcourt Brace. The separate purchases show him handling the book in quantities suited to different purposes: a small batch on one occasion and a much larger order on another. The diary does not specify the terms of either transaction, but it makes the purchases part of the ordinary business activity surrounding the book.

The Delayed Order

A later order for eighty books became a source of sustained irritation. Warhol had paid for the copies, but they did not arrive when expected. He called Harcourt Brace and screamed at the company; the dispute consumed the afternoon. Jackie Curtis came upstairs, heard him shouting on the phone, and left without approaching him. The publisher’s explanation was that the payment had been made by personal check and the company had waited for it to clear. Warhol dismissed the explanation as petty and described the company as small-time despite its established name.

Delivery and Distribution

The eighty books finally arrived in the morning before a lunch for Henry Geldzahler. Warhol handed copies out to everyone, turning the delayed shipment into an immediate round of distribution. But the episode also changed how freely he planned to give them away: with inflation in mind, he said he would be more stingy with the books from then on. The arrival settled the immediate shortage without erasing the lesson he drew from its cost.

Business in the Diary

The Harcourt Brace entries sit within a record that treated expenses and workaday transactions as material worth preserving. Warhol and Pat Hackett’s weekday calls recorded daily activity alongside cash expenses, while receipts were attached to typed pages and stored. Against that documentary routine, the publisher’s delayed shipment stands out not as an isolated literary anecdote but as a concrete business friction: the books had been paid for, the check-clearing process held up delivery, and the eventual copies were both promotional objects to give away and inventory whose value Warhol increasingly watched.