Charles Coffin Little (July 25, 1799 – August 11, 1869) was a U.S. publisher. He is best known for co-founding

Little, Brown and Company Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily ...

with

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the hono ...

Early life

Charles Coffin Little was born on July 25, 1799, in Kennebunk, Maine.

Career

Little arrived in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

early in life. He entered a shipping house, and around 1826–27 worked with booksellers Hilliard, Gray, Little & Wilkins in Boston, along with William Hilliard, Harrison Gray, and John H. Wilkins. He worked there until 1837, when he formed his partnership with James Brown under the style of Charles C. Little and Company. Little and Brown had previously been clerks, and were later partners, in a

bookstore Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of librar ...

in Boston founded in 1784 by

Ebenezer Battelle Ebenezer Battelle (1754–1815) was an American Revolutionary War veteran, a bookseller in Boston, Massachusetts, and a settler of Marietta, Ohio, in the late 18th century. Life in Dedham Battelle was born in 1754 in Dedham, Massachusetts, to Ebe ...

. The name of Little and Brown's firm was subsequently changed, due to the admission of other partners, to Little, Brown, and Co. Little was elected a member of the

American Antiquarian Society The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society i ...

in 1855.

Personal life

Little's daughter, Sarah Ellen Little, married

Richard Aldrich McCurdy Richard Aldrich McCurdy (January 29, 1835, New York City – March 6, 1916, Morristown, New Jersey) was an American attorney, business executive and banker during the Gilded Age. He served as the President of the Mutual Life Insurance Company from ...

Death

Little died on August 11, 1869, in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

, aged 70.

References

1799 births 1869 deaths American publishers (people) 19th century in Boston Members of the American Antiquarian Society 19th-century American businesspeople {{1790s-US-business-bio-stub