author
Ticknor and Company
A landmark Boston publishing house, it helped shape 19th-century American literature by bringing major writers to a wide readership. Its list included names like Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Stowe, Thoreau, and Mark Twain.
1 Audiobook
Ticknor and Company Book Catalog (1887)
by Ticknor and Company
About the author
Founded in Boston in 1832 as a bookselling business, the firm began under William Davis Ticknor and John Allen. After Allen left, it continued as William D. Ticknor and Company, and later evolved through partnerships into the better-known Ticknor and Fields.
The company became one of the most influential publishers in 19th-century America. It was closely associated with the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston and published an impressive group of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, and Mark Twain. It also became an early publisher of The Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review.
The name reflected the partnership of William Davis Ticknor and James T. Fields, who had started as an apprentice and rose to become a leading literary figure in the business. Financial changes and later mergers eventually carried the firm into the line that led to Houghton Mifflin, but Ticknor and Fields remains remembered as one of the defining literary publishers of its era.