WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR OF BOSTON’S OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE AND OF THE FIRM OF TICKNOR & FIELDS WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR JAMES THOMAS FIELDS 1810 August 6, Monday: William Davis Ticknor was born into a farming family just outside Lebanon, New Hampshire, a cousin of George Ticknor of Boston. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 6 of 8 Mo// From a very dead State my mind has been aroused this evening with a very close impression of the Language “Why Stand ye all the day Idle?” Surely this is applicable to myself for I am very dull & come short every day of what is required of me. I sometimes fear that my light will grow dimer & dimer untill it finally is extinguished. Oh Lord I desire to thank thee for this little quickening & pray that thou would’st renew thy visits of love in my heart as in days that are past — HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 1817 December 31, Wednesday: James Thomas Fields was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 1827 William Davis Ticknor left his home on a farm just outside Lebanon, New Hampshire at the age of 17, to work in the brokerage house of his uncle Benjamin Ticknor in Boston. Professor Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert was made a professor at the University of München. In this post, attempting to produce a religiously grounded interpretation of the cosmos, he would arouse the antagonism of Lorenz Oken. Cornelius Conway Felton graduated from Harvard College. Horatio Wood graduated (his copious and carefully written notes on French and Spanish literature per the lectures of Professor George Ticknor, fresh from the German universities, would be preserved, and under the influence of Dr. Karl Follen, Horatio would persist in being a strenuous runner until the 7th decade of his life). At the Divinity School, the following gentlemen commenced their studies: • Julian Abbot • Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch (A.B. Col. [Columbia College?]) • Francis Cunningham • Joseph Hawley Dorr (A.B. Bowdoin College) • George Washington Hosmer • Josiah Moore • John Owen (A.B. Bowdoin College) • Ephraim Peabody (A.B. Brown University) • Allen Putnam • George Putnam • John Turner Sargent • David Southard • Oliver Stearns (In these early years of the divinity school there were no formal class graduations, as students would be in the habit of remaining until they wrangled the offer of an appropriate pulpit.) NEW “HARVARD MEN” 2 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR 1830 During this year 1,700 titles were being printed in America, of which almost half were reprints of books published overseas. 1832 Houghton Mifflin had its origins on the corner of Washington and School streets in Boston, Massachusetts when John Allen and William Davis Ticknor bought the Old Corner Bookstore from “Carter & Hendee” (Richard B. Carter and Charles J. Hendee) booksellers. 1832-1834 Allen & Ticknor 1834-1843 William D. Ticknor 1843-1849 William D. Ticknor & Co. 1849-1854 Ticknor, Reed & Fields 1854-1868 Ticknor and Fields 1868-1871 Fields, Osgood & Co. 1871-1878 James R. Osgood & Co. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR This short-lived partnership’s initial book offering –KASPAR HAUSER, a novel translated from the German– has unfortunately by now been totally forgotten. At the laying of the cornerstone for a new Masonic Temple, the Boston Brigade Band performed a new march they termed the “Corner-Stone March.” This they would have printed as a piece of sheet music, and on the cover of the publication would appear an illustration depicting an antimasonic convention as being made up of grotesque animal figures. These ridiculous conventioneers at this cartoonish antimasonic convention are proclaiming their ideal as “no secret societies.” December 25, Tuesday: The brig Jasper set sail out of Boston harbor, bound for Malta with four other passengers besides Waldo Emerson. Charles Darwin spent Christmas Day at St. Martin’s Cove at Cape Receiver near Cape Horn. Piano Concerto no.7 by John Field was performed completely for the initial time. William Davis Ticknor got married with Emeline Staniford Holt. The couple would produce seven children, five of whom would survive until adulthood. 4 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR 1833 August: Dr. James Cowles Prichard pioneered “the term monomania, meaning madness affecting one train of thought … adopted in late times instead of melancholia.” (Herman Melville’s father-in-law, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, would utilize this concept “monomania” in a legal opinion in 1844, and Melville would deploy it in MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER in 1849, and then in MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE in 1851 as the defining characteristic of the psychology of the maimed Captain Ahab.) As what in this year would have been considered to be a prime instance of such monomania, in this year there appeared Lydia Maria Child’s infamous APPEAL IN FAVOR OF THAT CLASS OF AMERICANS CALLED AFRICANS. (The author’s “madness affecting one train of thought” was immediately recognized, and in an attempt at a cure her library privileges at the Boston Athenæum were summarily revoked.) The Reverend William Ellery Channing walked down to Child’s cottage from his home on Beacon Hill, a mile and a half, to discuss the book with her for all of three hours, but not because he agreed with her — the Reverend Channing considered Child misguided and a zealot. Child later commented that she had “suffered many a shivering ague-fit in attempting to melt, or batter away the glaciers of his prejudices.” The window of “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR William Davis Ticknor’s Old Corner Bookstore was smashed because this APPEAL was on display. Having overheard his parents discussing APPEAL (and perhaps having heard of that smashed window at the Old Corner Bookstore, which had been smashed by someone leaning against or being shoved against it), the 11-year-old Edward Everett Hale considered heaving a stone at it through the shop window. This is the book that a manager of the American Bible Society refused to read for fear it would make him an abolitionist, and in fact it would be what the 22-year-old Wendell Phillips would be reading just as he was abandoning the practice of law in order to devote his life to abolitionism. 6 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR Here is the cover of a modern edition of that offending treatise: Outspoken in her condemnation of slavery, Mrs. Child pointed out its contradiction with Christian teachings, and described the moral and physical degradation it brought upon slaves and owners alike — not omitting to mention the issue of miscegenation, and not excepting the North from its share of responsibility for the system. “I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken,” she wrote in the Introduction, “but though I expect ridicule and censure, it is not in my nature to fear them.” As a direct result of this, she would lose her editorial post with The Juvenile Miscellany (if you are so impolite and inconsiderate that you mention that we routinely molest our black servants, we certainly cannot allow you to have contact with our children). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR 1837 William Davis Ticknor began to publish in Boston a national monthly magazine of engravings, known as American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, that had been in existence for several years and had previously been edited by, among others, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Elizabeth Manning Hawthorne. AMERICAN MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1835 SUPPLEMENT OCTOBER 1836 SUPPLEMENT 1838 James Thomas Fields was hired by the Boston bookselling firm of William D. Ticknor, which would become Ticknor, Reed & Fields in 1854 and Fields, Osgood & Company in 1868. 1832-1834 Allen & Ticknor 1834-1843 William D. Ticknor 1843-1849 William D. Ticknor & Co. 1849-1854 Ticknor, Reed & Fields 1854-1868 Ticknor and Fields 1868-1871 Fields, Osgood & Co. 1871-1878 James R. Osgood & Co. 8 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR WILLIAM DAVIS TICKNOR September 13, Thursday: James Thomas Fields delivered an Anniversary Poem before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston (he would print this at the firm of his employer William D. Ticknor at the corner of Washington and School Streets). ANNIVERSARY POEM Early in September, Jones Very had felt within himself the gradual coming of a new will, somewhat like his old wicked self-will but different in that “it was not a feeling of my own but a sensible will that was not my own,” a will “to do good.” There was “a consciousness which seemed to say —‘That which creates you creates also that which you see or him to whom you speak.’” By Thursday, September the 13th, Very was convinced that he had acquired an “identification with Christ.” Moved entirely by this spirit within, he began to declare to all about him at Harvard College that the coming of Christ was at hand. That evening he went to the study of the Reverend Henry Ware, Jr., who was working up his alarmed response to Waldo Emerson’s address at the Divinity School, a response directed against Emerson’s “doctrine of the Divine Impersonality,” which he was scheduled to deliver at the Divinity Hall Chapel on September 23d. Ignoring theology students who happened to be in the professor’s study, Very proceeded to parse Matthew chapter 24 to the professor and to insist that what he was offering was eternal, revealed truth.