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| Parent company | Hachette Book Group USA |
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| Founded | 1837; 188 years ago (1837) |
| Founder | |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Boston (1837 to 2001) andNew York City (2001 to present), U.S. |
| Imprints | Back Bay Books; Mulholland Books; Jimmy Patterson Books; Little, Brown Spark; Voracious |
| Official website | www |
Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 byCharles Coffin Little andJames Brown inBoston. For close to two centuries, it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featuredEmily Dickinson's poetry andBartlett's Familiar Quotations. Since 2006, Little, Brown and Company is a division of theHachette Book Group.[1]
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 byEbenezer Battelle on Marlborough Street.[1] They published works ofBenjamin Franklin andGeorge 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 theEncyclopædia Britannica,[3] the dictionaries ofWilliam Smith, and many other standard works.[4] In the early years Little and Brown published theWorks ofDaniel Webster,George Bancroft'sHistory of the United States,[3]William H. Prescott'sFerdinand and Isabella,Jones Very's first book of poetry (edited byRalph Waldo Emerson),Letters ofJohn Adams and works byJames Russell Lowell andFrancis Parkman. Little, Brown and Company was the American publisher forEdward Gibbon'sThe Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.[1][3]
The firm was the original publisher ofUnited States Statutes at Large beginning in 1845, under authority granted by ajoint resolution of Congress. In 1874, Congress transferred the authority to publish theStatutes at Large to theGovernment 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.[6]
In 1853, Little, Brown began publishing the works of British poets fromChaucer toWordsworth. Ninety-six volumes were published in the series in five years.[7]
In 1859,John Bartlett became a partner in the firm. He held the rights to hisFamiliar 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 publishedQuo Vadis. In 1898, Little, Brown purchased a list of titles from theRoberts Brothers firm.[7]: 270 19th century employees includedCharles Carroll Soule.[8]
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 allAtlantic Monthly books. This arrangement lasted until 1985. During this time the joint Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown imprint publishedAll Quiet on the Western Front,Herge'sThe Adventures of Tintin,James Truslow Adams'sThe Adams Family,Charles Nordhoff andJames Norman Hall'sMutiny on the Bounty and its sequels,James Hilton'sGoodbye, Mr. Chips,Walter D. Edmonds'sDrums Along the Mohawk,William Least Heat-Moon'sBlue Highways,Tracy Kidder'sThe Soul of a New Machine,J. D. Salinger'sThe Catcher in the Rye[7]: 270 andJames G. Randall'sThe Divided Union.[9]
Salinger later terminated his contract with the publishing house sometime in the 1970s, though his novel was still published by Little, Brown.
Other prominent figures published by Little, Brown in the 20th and early 21st centuries have includedNagaru Tanigawa,Donald Barthelme,Louisa M. Alcott,Catherine Drinker Bowen,Bernie Brillstein,Thornton Burgess,Hortense Calisher,Bruce Catton,A. J. Cronin,Peter De Vries,J. Frank Dobie,C. S. Forester,John Fowles,Malcolm Gladwell,Pete Hamill,Cynthia Harrod-Eagles,Lillian Hellman,Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.,Henry Kissinger,Elizabeth Kostova,Norman Mailer,William Manchester,Nelson Mandela,John P. Marquand,Masters and Johnson,Stephenie Meyer,Rick Moody,Ogden Nash,Edwin O'Connor,Erich Maria Remarque,Alice Sebold,David Sedaris,George Stephanopoulos,Gwyn Thomas,Gore Vidal,David Foster Wallace,Evelyn Waugh,John A. Williams,P. G. Wodehouse,James Patterson andHerman Wouk. Little, Brown also published the photography ofAnsel Adams.[7]: 272
The company was purchased byTime Inc. in 1968.[7]: 272 Little, Brown acquired the medical publisher College Hill Press in 1986.[10] Little, Brown was made part of the Time Warner Book Group when Time merged with Warner Communications to formTime Warner in 1989. In 2001, all editing staff moved fromBoston to Time Warner Book Group offices inNew York City.[11]
In 2001, Michael Pietsch became publisher of Little, Brown.
Little, Brown expanded into theUnited Kingdom in 1992 when TWBG boughtMacDonald & Co fromMaxwell Communications, taking on its Abacus (upmarket paperback) andOrbit (science fiction) lists, and authors includingIain Banks. Feminist publisherVirago Press followed in 1996. Also in 1996,Wolters Kluwer acquired Little, Brown's legal and medical publishing division and incorporated it into itsAspen andLippincott-Raven imprints.[12]
In 2006, the Time Warner Book Group was sold to French publisherHachette Livre. Following this, the Little, Brown imprint is used by Hachette Livre's U.S. publishing company,Hachette Book Group USA.
In 2011, Little, Brown launched an imprint devoted to suspense publishing:Mulholland Books.[13]
In February 2013, after Pietsch had risen to CEO of Hachette Book Group, Reagan Arthur was selected to be publisher of Little, Brown, while closing her five-year-old imprint, Reagan Arthur Books.[14]
In October 2017, Little, Brown started an unnamed imprint devoted to health, lifestyle, psychology, and science with the appointment of Tracy Behar as the imprint's vice president, publisher, and editor-in-chief.[15] The imprint Little, Brown Spark launched in fall 2018[16] and has published authors such asMark Hyman,Tricia Hersey, andSue Johnson.
In October 2018, Little, Brown announced an imprint dedicated to illustrated books with Michael Szczerban as vice president and editorial director.[17][18] The Voracious imprint launched in fall 2019[19] and has published works by Accidentally Wes Anderson,Ayesha Curry,Vivian Howard,Christopher Kimball's Milk Street,Marcus Samuelsson, andPete Souza, among others.[20][21]
In February 2020,Hachette Book Group acquired 1,000 titles for young readers fromDisney Book Group for Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.[22]
In May 2020, Bruce Nichols became publisher of Little, Brown's adult imprints.[23]
In March 2024, Sally Kim succeeded Nichols as publisher, joining Little, Brown from G.P. Putnam's Sons.[24]
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