Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/284

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256

��A New-Hampshire Publisher.

��pursuits and associations, and estab- lished himself in the publishing busi- ness, in connection with John Allen, forming the firm of Allen & Ticknor. It was the year 1832 when the new firm embarked on the sea of commercial ad- venture, and founded a house that has been for over fifty years one of the most interesting features of Boston.

About three years before, Messrs.

��Vega, and bore a name in imprint which for more than forty years thereafter was associated with that of the most illus- trious of American poets. A few years later, and another young poet, fresh from Harvard, and a devout worship- per of Wordsworth and Channing, came into the litde bookstore, bringing his roll of manuscript. This was James Russell Lowell, a young lawyer just

��Carter & Hendee had opened a book- starting in for clients, but much prefer- selling and publishing store, in the ven- ring the Muses, who not long thereafter erable building at the corner of School and Washington Streets, which dates from the year 1 71 2, and was for some years prior to the time of these events the shop of the apothecary, Mr. Clarke, the fa- ther of the Rev. James Freeman Clarke.

After three years of book- selling, desiring to give up their

miscellaneous business. Carter & Hen- dee concluded to retire to chambers

���THE OLD CORNER BOOK-STORE IN 1835.

��claimed his entire heart and time, while

many a precious volume appeared with

_ _ _ ___ his name in the

^ -==!^'^:^ centre of the

titlepage, and that of Ticknor on the imprint line.

For a dozen years the busi- ness went on under the sole charge of Mr. Ticknor, and es- tablished firm and intimate re- lations with the

��authors and friends of literature through- out New England. In 1845 the co- and secured a purchaser for their former partnership was changed to William D. store and stock in the new house of Ticknor & Co., and so remained until Allen & Ticknor. Within a year, again, _ Mr. Ticknor's death. The titlepages of Mr. Allen experienced all that he cared the publications of the house, however, to of a publisher's life, and accordingly bore the names of the partners ; reading, parted with his interest, and retired, at this time, Ticknor, Reed, & Fields.

��But even during this brief period, the Old Corner Bookstore had been visited frequently by a handsome and courteous young professor from Bowdoin College, whose first volume bore the date of 1 833, with the name of Henry W. Longfel- low as author, and Allen & Ticknor as publishers. It was Longfellow's noble translation of Manrique and Lope de

��Mr. Fields, like his partner, was a New- Hampshire boy, who had journeyed up from Portsmouth to Boston a few years before, and become a clerk behind Mr. Ticknor's counter. The business con- tinued to increase, and more and more the Old Corner Bookstore grew to be a pleasant and familiar haunt for scholarly men and all who loved the genial com-

�� �