Lee & Shepard was a publishing and bookselling firm 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...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

 in the 19th century, established by William Lee (b.1826) and Charles Augustus Billings Shepard (1829-1889) Authors published by the firm included: George Melville Baker; Sophie May

Rebecca Sophia Clarke

Rebecca Sophia Clarke , also known as Sophie May, was an American author of children's fiction. Using her nieces and nephews as inspiration, she wrote realistic stories about children. She wrote 45 books between 1860 and 1903. The most popular being the Little Prudy books...

; Henry Morgan

Henry Morgan (minister)

Henry Morgan was an author and Methodist minister in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th-century.-Biography:Morgan moved to Boston in 1859. "He preached for some time to an independent congregation in the Music Hall. .....

; Oliver Optic

William Taylor Adams

William Taylor Adams , pseudonym Oliver Optic, was a noted academic, author, and Massachusetts state legislator. He was born in Medway, Massachusetts in 1822 to Captain Laban Adams and Catherine Johnson Adams....

; William Carey Richards; Francis Henry Underwood

Francis Henry Underwood

Francis Henry Underwood , Enfield, Massachusetts-born critic and biographer, was American Consul at Glasgow and Leith in Scotland.He wrote Hand-books of English Literature,Builders of American Literature,...

; and Levina Buoncuore Urbino

Levina Buoncuore Urbino

Levina Buoncuore Urbino or Lavinia Buoncuore Urbino was a writer and translator in the Boston, Massachusetts-area in the 19th-century. Among her published works was An American Woman in Europe , a frank account of her travels in Europe 1866-1869; she also wrote children's books and a guide to art...

. The business conducted its operations from offices at 149 Washington St. (ca.1872); the corner of Franklin and Hawley St.

Hawley Street (Boston)

Hawley Street is located in the Financial District of Boston, Massachusetts, between Milk and Summer Streets. Prior to 1799, it was called Bishop's Alley and briefly in the 1790s Board Alley.-17th century:...

 (1873-1885); and "adjoining the Old South

Old South Meeting House

The Old South Meeting House , in the Downtown Crossing area of Boston, Massachusetts, gained fame as the organizing point for the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. 5,000 colonists gathered at the Meeting House, the largest building in Boston at the time.-Church :The church, with its 56 m ...

," no.10 Milk St. (ca.1885).

One of the first titles issued by the firm was the diary of Adam Gurowski, reviewed in 1862 by the New York Evening Post: "This work is a crabbed specimen of authorship. ... The humor of it is sometimes that of Thersites, when his thorny tongue lashed the heroes of the camp, and sometimes that of Caliban when he cursed the arts of his superiors. ... Yet it is a book to be carefully read. Under its rough and prickly burr there is a nutritive nut."

In 1905 Lee & Shepard merged with the Lothrop Company to form Lothrop, Lee & Shepard.

Further reading

Published by the firm

• Adam Gurowski. Diary from March 4, 1861 to November 12, 1862. 1862.
• My teacher's gem. 1863. Engraving by Kilburn
  Samuel Smith Kilburn
  Samuel Smith Kilburn was an engraver in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th-century. He trained with Abel Bowen. Kilburn's work appeared in popular periodicals such as Gleason's Pictorial. His business partners included Richard P. Mallory and Henry C. Cross...
  
  .
• Charles R. Baker (of the Dorchester Nurseries). Practical and scientific fruit culture. 1866. (Some of the illustrations were derived from the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1847)
• Sophie May. Cousin Grace. 1866. Engraving by N. Brown.
• Henry Morgan. Ned Nevins: the news boy, or, Street life in Boston. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1867.
• John Townsend Trowbridge. Neighbor's wives. 1867
• John Frost. Life of Daniel Webster: the statesman and the patriot. 1868.
• Oliver Optic. Our standard-bearer: or, the life of General Ulysses S. Grant. 1868. Illus. by Thomas Nast.
• Our Boys and Girls. v.11-12 (1872).
• Eleanor W. Talbot. My lady's casket of jewels and flowers for her adorning. 1885. Includes color plates.
• Oliver Optic's Magazine. v.17-18 (1875).
• Irene E. Jerome. One Year's Sketch Book. 1885.
• Harriet Stewart Miner. Orchids: the Royal Family of Plants. 1885
• Irving Bacheller (1900) Eben Holden, A Tale of the North Country
• John Townsend Trowbridge. The Little Master. 1887

About the firm

• List of books published by Lee and Shepard, 149 Washington St., Boston. Uniform trade list circular, May 1867.
• George L. Austin. "Lee and Shepard." Bay State Monthly v.2 no.6, March 1885; p.309-316
• "Lee and Shepard." American Bookman 17, 1885; p.211-214
• Raymond Lincoln Kilgour. Lee and Shepard: publishers for the people. Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1965.

External links

• WorldCat