Overview
Company records from Little, Brown and Company, Riverside Bindery, and Roberts Brothers.
Dates
- Creation: 1810-1996, undated
Conditions Governing Access
Open for research.
This collection is shelved offsite. Retrieval requires advance notice. Check with Houghton Public Services staff.
Conditions Governing Use
Reading room staff, please note that some boxes from this collection are not in archival record cartons and will require untaping upon delivery from Harvard Depository. They will need to be retaped for shipment back.
Extent
608.05 linear feet (471 boxes, 13 portfolio boxes, and 148 volumes)This collection documents the activities of publishing house Little, Brown and Company including related companies Riverside Bindery and Roberts Brothers. File types include administrative records, cashbooks, receipts, correspondence, bills of lading, payrolls, printed materials, manuscript compositions and proofs, photographs and images, royalty statements, press releases, and other related documents. Of special note are correspondence with Louisa May Alcott and Bronson Alcott, as well as materials related to the publication of works by Gore Vidal, Herman Wouk, and Anthony Powell. It also includes 277 book covers produced by the Medical Division of publishing house Little, Brown and Company, some designed by Clif Gaskill.
Biographical / Historical
Little, Brown and Company was founded in 1837 by Charles Little and James Brown in Boston, Massachusetts, as a bookselling and publishing enterprise. They had a close business relationship with printing company the Riverside Press from its inception. Among their early publications were works by George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, as well as Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, translations of Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. More recently they have published authors such as J. D. Salinger, Gore Vidal, David Foster Wallace, Norman Mailer, Malcolm Gladwell, David Sedaris, Alice Sebold, Evelyn Waugh, James Patterson, Herman Wouk, and Stephanie Meyer.
In 1925, Little, Brown began publishing books for Atlantic Monthly, including The Adventures of Tin-Tin and The Adams Family. They bought the publishing company Roberts Brothers in 1898 and the New York Graphic Society (later known as Bulfinch Press) in 1974. In 1968 Little, Brown was acquired by Time, Inc., and in 2006 became a part of Hachette Book Group.
Sources
"A Brief History of Little, Brown and Company," Little, Brown School and Library. https://www.littlebrownlibrary.com/uncategorized/a-brief-history-of-little-brown-and-compa/
Arrangement
Arranged into two series: I. Little, Brown and Company records and II. Related companies. Series I is arranged into eight subseries: A. General company records; B. Author files; C. Editorial files; D. Central files; E. 34 Beacon St. Vault; F. Law and medical; G. Bound Volumes; and H. Artwork. Series II. is arranged into two subseries: A. Riverside Bindery; and B. Roberts Brothers.
Collection is minimally processed.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Other Finding Aids
Detailed list of book titles with designers noted for holdings from 1968 through 1982 available in curatorial file.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2018M-97. Gift of Clifton Gaskill, 2018 April 17.
89M-59. Gift of Little, Brown and Company, 1989, 1999.
87M-113. Gift of Little, Brown and Company, 1987 July.
96M-19. Gift of Judith Graham, Little, Brown and Company, 1996 October, 1999 February.
96M-36. Gift of Little, Brown and Company, 1997 March, 1997 May, 1999 February.
97M-45. Gift of Little, Brown and Company, 1998 January, 1999 February.
Processing Information
Processed by Melanie Wisner, 2018 May. Processed by Ashley Nary, 2019 July. Processed by Annalisa Moretti, 2022 March.
Processing Information
This collection was processed to a basic level with minimal rehousing, organization, and preservation
Processing Information
Series I, Subseries G: Bound Volumes closed for end processing.
Processing Information
This finding aid was revised in 2023-2024 to address outdated and harmful descriptive language. During that revision, contextualizing processing notes were added to the description of multiple items. For more information on reparative archival description at Harvard, see Harvard Library’s Statement on Harmful Language in Archival Description.
- Title
- Little, Brown and Company. Little, Brown and Company records, 1810-1996
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Date
- 2021
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- hou02917
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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