FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM DAVIS TICHNOR
AND JAMES FIELD¹The publishing firm Ticknor and Fields was begun in Boston by William Davis Ticknor and went through many name changes as partners came and departed. It operated under the name Ticknor and Fields from 1854 to 1868, with James Fields serving as managing partner alongside Ticknor. In addition to an impressive array of books by American and British authors, the firm published the North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly. In 1861, Ticknor and Fields purchased the literary magazine Atlantic Monthly, founded in 1857, and added more coverage of contemporary politics. After the deaths of both founders, the firm was absorbed by Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1889. Theodora Mills, “Ticknor and Fields,” American Literary Publishing Houses, 1900–1980, ed. Peter Dzwonkoski (Detroit, Mich, 1986), 357; Ellery Sedgwick, A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857– 1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb (Amherst, Mass., 1994), 3, 75, 104; ANB (online).

Rochester, N.Y. 22 Oct[ober 1866.]

MESSRS TICHNOR & FIELD:

I fear you will think you have drawn an elephant this time. Still I hope
you will find some use for my manuscript.²Douglass published articles in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in December 1866 and January 1867. The second piece carries the title that Douglass suggested in this letter. Fields, the editor, likely divided Douglass’s original lengthy submission and published it in separate articles. The December 1866 article carried the title “Reconstruction.” Ticknor & Fields to Douglass, 11 November 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 224R, FD Papers, DLC; Atlantic Monthly, 18: 761–65 (December 1866), 19: 112–17 (January 1867). If you cannot get it into the
Atlantic, you may possibly find it convenient to print it in phamphlet. At
any rate I must protest, after the labor it has cost me, against its being
flung into a waste paper basket. You see that I send it in time and will easily infer from that fact that I am quite in earnest about appearing, once in
my life, in your justly celebrated magazine. You need not send me your
December number—for I shall of the first news boy I meet and will tell
my friends to do likewise.

I have not given my article a title—Why would not this be a good one:

An appeal to Congress
For IMPARTIAL Suffrage.

Please acknowledge the receipt of the enclosed—The manuscript is
sent in two envelopes—

Respectfully yours

FREDERICK DOUG LASS—

ALS: Norcross Manuscripts, MHiS.