Ticknor and Fields

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Ticknor and Fields
William Davis Ticknor and John Allen
SuccessorHoughton Mifflin
Country of originUnited States
Headquarters locationBoston
Key peopleJames T. Fields, James R. Osgood
Publication typesBooks, Magazines

Ticknor and Fields was an American publishing company based in

The Atlantic Monthly and North American Review
.

The firm was named after founder

William Davis Ticknor and apprentice James T. Fields, although the names of additional business partners would come and go, notably that of James R. Osgood in the firm's later years. Financial problems led Osgood to merge the company with the publishing firm of Henry Oscar Houghton in 1878, forming a precursor to the modern publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
.

Houghton Mifflin revived the Ticknor and Fields name as an imprint from 1979 to 1989.

Company history

Early years

James Fields, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Ticknor; photo by J.W. Black, ca.1863

In 1832

William Davis Ticknor and John Allen began a small bookselling business called Ticknor and Allen which operated out of the Old Corner Bookstore located on Washington and School streets in Boston, Massachusetts. The space had previously been used by publishers Carter & Hendee, who hired a teenaged James T. Fields
as an apprentice. When Ticknor and Allen began their business, Fields joined them. A year later, Allen withdrew from the firm, and Ticknor continued business under William D. Ticknor and Company. When John Reed and Fields became partners in 1845, the imprint was changed to Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. Reed retired in 1854 and the imprint was renamed as Ticknor and Fields, which became well known.

During these years the firm purchased and printed the

Alfred Tennyson. These were prosperous years for the firm, and they compiled an impressive list of authors, Horatio Alger, Lydia Maria Child, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Alfred Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, and John Greenleaf Whittier. The Old Corner Bookstore had become the publishing house and meeting place for these authors. Many writers visited many times a week; George William Curtis referred to it as "the hub of the Hub", referring to Boston's nickname, and said that it "compelled the world to acknowledge that there was an American literature".[1]

The success of the firm was largely in part to the perfectly matched but widely varied talents of Ticknor and Fields. Ticknor gave his attention to the financial and manufacturing departments while Fields focused on literary relations and social aspects of the business. It was also during these years that Ticknor and Fields developed a close relationship with the Riverside Press, founded by Henry Oscar Houghton in 1852.

After Ticknor

Ticknor & Fields office, 124 Tremont Street, Boston, ca.1868; located across from the Park Street Church[2]

In the spring of 1864, Ticknor accompanied Nathaniel Hawthorne on a trip to restore the author's health, at the urging of his wife Sophia Hawthorne.[3] During the trip, Ticknor became ill with pneumonia.[4] Hawthorne wrote to Fields that "our friend Ticknor is suffering under a billious attack... He had previously seemed uncomfortable, but not to an alarming degree."[5] Ticknor died on the morning of April 10, 1864.[6]

Upon Ticknor's sudden and unexpected death, interests in the firm were carried on by his son Howard M. Ticknor. During these years the business had outgrown the Old Corner Bookstore and Fields, now in charge of the company, was no longer interested in the retail store. He sold the Old Corner Bookstore on November 12, 1864, and moved the publishing house to 124 Tremont Street.[7] The firm also began to publish Our Young Folks edited by Howard M. Ticknor. The younger Ticknor soon retired and, in 1868, the firm was reorganized as Fields, Osgood, & Co.[8] Benjamin Holt Ticknor, son of William Davis Ticknor, was admitted at a partner in 1870. On New Year's Day, 1871, Fields announced his retirement from the business at a small gathering of friends,[9] intending to focus on his own writing. On January 2, 1871, the remaining partners bought out Fields's share of the company for $120,000 and it was renamed James R. Osgood & Co.[8]

Osgood, who considered Fields a mentor, attracted substantial new talent and published new works by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Lucy Larcom, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, Celia Thaxter, and Charles Dudley Warner.[10]

Final years

The firm invested in

Houghton Mifflin Company
.

Twentieth-century revival

In 1979, Houghton Mifflin revived the Ticknor and Fields name as an imprint. Chester Kerr was the editor from its reestablishment to 1984; Corlies Smith followed him from 1984 to 1989.[12][13]

Image gallery

Notes

  1. ^ Boston Directory. 1868
  2. ^ Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 279.
  3. ^
  4. ^ Tryon, Warren S. Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963: 361.
  5. ^
  6. ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 732, by Various."Project Gutenberg
  7. .
  8. . Retrieved 2018-05-16.

Further reading

External links