Ticknor and Company

Ticknor and Company was part of the influential Boston publishing tradition centered on William Davis Ticknor and, later, James T. Fields. The business began as a bookstore in 1832 and evolved into one of the best-known literary publishers in the United States, operating from the Old Corner Bookstore and building close ties with many leading writers of the century.

The firm is best remembered through the better-known name Ticknor and Fields, under which it published authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, and Mark Twain. It was also connected with early publishing of The Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review, giving it an important place not just in book history but in American literary life more broadly.

Because the company changed names and partners over time, “Ticknor and Company” can refer to one stage in a longer publishing story rather than a single, simple identity. What remains clear is its legacy: this was a house that helped define the look, reach, and confidence of American publishing in the 1800s.