William D. Ticknor established a publishing business in Boston in 1832 in partnership with John Allen. Although John Allen withdrew from the company in 1834, the firm published under the imprint John Allen and Company from that time until around 1849. During its great publishing years the firm went by many other names: Allen & Ticknor (1832--1834), William D. Ticknor (1834--1843), William D. Ticknor & Co. (1843--1849), Ticknor, Reed, and Fields (1849--1854), Ticknor and Fields (1854--1868), Fields, Osgood, & Co. (1868--1871), and James R. Osgood & Co. (1871--1878). The Company assembled perhaps the most distinguished list of writers ever associated with one American firm, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau.
In 1878 the houses of Hurd and Houghton and James R. Osgood & Company merged and became Houghton, Osgood & Company. James Osgood left the partnership in 1880 and the company, which now owned most of Ticknor's author list, became known as Houghton Mifflin & Company. James Osgood revived his own company and to a certain extent built a new list, before going out of business in 1885. Benjamin H. and Thomas B. Ticknor continued this business for a few years, publishing as Ticknor and Company, until they went bankrupt in 1889, and the business was acquired by Houghton Mifflin.
Ticknor & Fields was revived as an imprint by Houghton Mifflin in 1979 under the editorial direction of Chester Kerr. He was succeeded in 1984 by Corlies 'Cork' Smith, editor-inchief of Harcourt Brace. The imprint was abandoned in 1994.
