James Brown was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 publisher and co-founder of Little, Brown and Company

Little, Brown and Company

Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...

.

Biography

Brown was born in Acton, Massachusetts

Acton, Massachusetts

Acton is a suburban town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States about twenty-one miles west-northwest of Boston along Route 2 west of Concord and about ten miles southwest of Lowell. The population was 21,924 at the 2010 census...

. He started his working life was as a servant in the family of Prof. Hedge, of Cambridge

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, by whom he was instructed in the classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 and in mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

. Around 1832, he worked for booksellers Hilliard, Gray & Co. on Washington Street in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, along with William Hilliard

William Hilliard

William Hilliard was a publisher and bookseller in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early 19th-century. He worked with several business partners through the years, including Jacob Abbot Cummings, James Brown, and Charles C. Little...

, Harrison Gray, and J.H. Wilkins. He was originally hired by Hilliard as a clerk. That firm was dissolved after the death of one of the partners, and Brown went to work for Charles C. Little & Co., run by Charles Coffin Little

Charles Coffin Little

Charles Coffin Little was a U.S. publisher. He is best known for co-founding Little, Brown and Company with James Brown.-Biography:Little arrived in Boston early in life...

, also a former clerk. In 1837, the firm became Charles C. Little and James Brown, and Brown remained there until his death. Augustus Flagg joined them in 1838 and would become managing partner after the deaths of the two founders.

The firm's name was changed to Little, Brown and Company in 1847. In 1853 Little, Brown began publishing the works of British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 poets from Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

 to Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

. There were ninety-six volumes published in the series in five years, but Brown did not live to see its completion.

His son John Murray Brown took over when Flagg retired in 1884. A life of James Brown, by George Stillman Hillard

George Stillman Hillard

George Stillman Hillard was an American lawyer and author. Besides developing his Boston legal practice , he served in the Massachusetts legislature, edited several Boston journals, and wrote on literature, politics and travel.-Biography:Hillard was born at Machias, Maine on September 22, 1808...

, was published in Boston in 1855.