Roberts Brothers

About Roberts Brothers

Roberts Brothers was a Boston publishing house, active from 1857 to 1898, best known as the first publisher of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

The firm was set up in 1857 by three brothers, Austin J., John F. and Lewis A. Roberts. It began as a bookbindery and moved into publishing in the early 1860s. Thomas Niles Jr. joined in 1863, later became a partner and remained with the firm until he died in 1894.

It was Niles who urged Alcott to write a book for girls. The first volume of Little Women appeared on 30 September 1868 in a first printing of 2,000 copies, illustrated by Alcott's sister May, and the second volume followed in April 1869. The book's success established the firm, which went on to issue Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870). Its American authors also included Emily Dickinson, Julia Ward Howe and Helen Hunt Jackson, and it published British and European writers such as William Morris, Jean Ingelow and George Sand. Niles also devised the No Name Series (1876 to 1887), in which books appeared without their authors' names.

In 1898 Little, Brown and Company bought the firm and its list of titles, which ended Roberts Brothers as a separate house. Little, Brown itself later passed to Time Inc. (1968) and then to Hachette (2006).