One Hundred Years of Publishing; 1837 - 1937

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1937. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. [8], 83, [3] pages. Illustrations. DJ has wear, tears, soiling, chips, and a scuff at the front. 'Official' company history touching all the high spots in its history. Charles C. Little and James Brown became partners, purchased an existing bookstore in 1837 which by 1841 started in the book publishing business. They first published law books and eventually expanded to a variety of works. Among the illustrations are the following individuals: Augustus Flagg, John Bartlett, Francis Parkman, John Murray Brown, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Henry Sienkiewicz, Edward Everett Hale, Louisa May Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Erich Maria Remarque, Charles Nordhoff, and James Normal Hall. Little, Brown and Company is an American publisher founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown, and for close to two centuries has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily Dickinson's poetry and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. 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. 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. They published works of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and they were specialized in legal publishing and importing titles. For many years, it 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, the dictionaries of William Smith, and many other standard works. In the early years Little and Brown published the Works of Daniel Webster, George Bancroft's History of the United States, 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. 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. 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. 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. John Murray Brown died in 1908 and James W. McIntyre became managing partner. When McIntyre died in 1913, Little, Brown incorporated. In 1925, Little, Brown entered into an agreement to publish all Atlantic Monthly books. The joint Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown imprint published All Quiet on the Western Front, Herge's The Adventures of Tintin, James Truslow Adams's The Adams Family, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall's Mutiny on the Bounty and its sequels, James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Walter D. Edmonds's Drums Along the Mohawk, William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, and J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.