'Turnpikes to free thought'

Cobblestoned Acorn Street, on Beacon Hill

“Boston is full of crooked little streets but I tell you that Boston has opened and kept open more turnpikes that lead straight to free thought and free speech and free deeds than any other city of live men or dead men.’’

— Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), physician, poet and essayist and father of famed Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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A Little, Brown and Co. insignia used in 1906. Little Brown was founded in Boston and stayed there until the late 20th Century. It has published many famous New England and other authors since its founding, and it helped make Boston for many years the leading book-publishing city in America and Boston a literary mecca.

"The assertion that Boston was the literary center during the period in which American literature acquired a shelf of its own in the library of the race is hardly open to dispute."

— M.A. DeWolfe Howe (1864-1960), author and editor