Boston Literary History 1600s Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) First Printing Press (1638) First Bookstore (pre-1675) King’s Chapel Library (1698) 1700s Samuel Adams (1722–1803) First Newspapers The Old Corner Bookstore (est. 1711) Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) Hannah Adams (1755–1831) American Academy of Arts and Sciences (est. 1780) First American Novel: The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown (1789) 1800s Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804–1894) Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) The Boston Athenaeum (est. 1807) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) William Wells Brown (1814–1884) North American Review (est. 1815) Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) The Brattle Book Shop (est. 1825) Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) Annie Adams Fields (1834–1915) Little, Brown (est. 1837) Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s Bookshop (1840–1850) Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842–1924) Ticknor & Fields (1845–1864) Beacon Press (est. 1854) Boston Public Library (est. 1854) The Saturday Club (est. 1855) Schoenhof’s Foreign Books (est. 1856) The Atlantic Monthly (est. 1857) Alice Brown (1857–1948) Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929) Pauline E. Hopkins (1859–1930) Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920) George Washington Forbes (1864–1927) Ginn & Company/Athenæum Press (est. 1867) William Monroe Trotter (1872–1934) Houghton Mifflin (est. 1872) Amy Lowell (1874–1925) Angelina Weld Grimké (1880–1958) Mary Antin (1881–1949) Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Boston Courant (1890–1895) Merrymount Press (est. 1893) Woman's Era (1894–1897) Fanny Goldstein (1895–1961) Tyler Street Reading Room (est. 1896) The Saturday Evening Girls Club (1899) 1900s The Colored American Magazine (1900–1909) Boston Guardian (1901–1950) F.O. Matthiessen (1902–1950) Helene Johnson (1906–1995) Dorothy West (1907–1998) The Grolier Poetry Book Shop (est. 1927) The Saturday Evening Quill (1928–1930) Anne Sexton (1928–1974) The Harvard Book Store (est. 1932) Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) John Wieners (1934–2002) Charley Shively (1937–2017) John Mitzel (1948–2013) The Emerson Review (est. 1953) The Brookline Booksmith (est. 1961) The Boston Phoenix (1966–2013) Avatar (1967 to 1968) The Old Mole (1968–1970) Maiden Voyage (1969–1983) Ploughshares (est. 1971) PeopleLearn more about the people of Boston’s literary past. PlacesLearn more about the places of Boston’s literary past. ArticlesRead more about Boston’s literary past.
