Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries, it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily Dickinson's poetry and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Since 2006, Little, Brown and Company is a division of the Hachette Book Group.[1]
Not to be confused with Little, Brown Book Group.Parent company
1837
United States
Boston (1837 to 2011) and New York City (2001 to present), U.S.
Back Bay Books; Mulholland Books; Jimmy Patterson Books; Little, Brown Spark; Voracious
History[edit]
19th century[edit]
Little, Brown and Company had its roots in the book selling trade. It was founded in 1837 in Boston by Charles Little and James Brown.[1][2] They formed the partnership "for the purpose of Publishing, Importing, and Selling Books".[1] It can trace its roots before that to 1784 to a bookshop owned by Ebenezer Battelle on Marlborough Street.[1] They published works of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and specialized in legal publishing and importing titles.[3]
The company was the most extensive law publisher in the United States, and also the largest importer of standard English law and miscellaneous works, introducing American buyers to the Encyclopædia Britannica,[3] the dictionaries of William Smith, and many other standard works.[4] In the early years Little and Brown published the Works of Daniel Webster, George Bancroft's History of the United States,[3] William H. Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, Jones Very's first book of poetry (edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson), Letters of John Adams and works by James Russell Lowell and Francis Parkman. Little, Brown and Company was the American publisher for Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.[1][3]
The firm was the original publisher of United States Statutes at Large beginning in 1845, under authority granted by a joint resolution of Congress. In 1874, Congress transferred the authority to publish the Statutes at Large to the Government Printing Office, which has been responsible for producing the set since that time.[5] 1 U.S.C. § 113 still recognizes their edition of the laws and treaties of the United States are competent evidence of the several public and private Acts of Congress, treaties, and international agreements other than treaties of the United States.
In 1853, Little, Brown began publishing the works of British poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth. Ninety-six volumes were published in the series in five years.[6]
In 1859, John Bartlett became a partner in the firm. He held the rights to his Familiar Quotations, and Little, Brown published the 15th edition of the work in 1980, 125 years after its first publication. John Murray Brown, James Brown's son, took over when Augustus Flagg retired in 1884. In the 1890s, Little, Brown expanded into general publishing, including fiction. In 1896, it published Quo Vadis. In 1898, Little, Brown purchased a list of titles from the Roberts Brothers firm.[6] 19th century employees included Charles Carroll Soule.[7]