Lewis Augustus Roberts (1833-1901), after emigrating from England, established a bookbinding business in Boston in 1840. It grew to include his brothers, John and Austin; the bookbinding business eventually was sold in 1859. In 1862 during the Civil War, with the growing interest in the new medium of photography, the brothers began manufacturing and selling photographic albums and soon added job printing. Interested in getting into publishing, Lewis Roberts, who was the firm's principal and handled its finances, hired Thomas Niles (1825-1894) as editor. Niles was particularly suited for this position, having worked for Ticknor and Fields and at one time having run his own publishing company. His skill and his knowledge of the book market were invaluable, and the firm's venture into publishing proved successful. In 1872, Niles was made a partner in the firm.
Roberts Brothers' first big publication was a pirated edition of the work of English poet Jean Ingelow. Notable books that followed included Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868-69), Helen Hunt Jackson's Romona (1884), the first American edition of Stevenson's Treasure Island (1884) as well as the works of other major authors such as Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, and Christina and Dante Rossetti. The sudden death of Niles from a heart attack while in Italy in 1894 led in a few years to the demise of Roberts Brothers, since he was the driving force and brains behind the firm's publishing efforts. Adapted from Watkinson Library at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut (http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/library/watkinson/RobertsBrothersCollectionInventory.htm sighted October 2006)
