Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, and reference works. The company is based in the Boston Financial District. It was formerly known as Houghton Mifflin Company, but it changed its name following the 2007 acquisition of Harcourt Publishing. Prior to March 2010, it was a subsidiary of Education Media and Publishing Group Limited, an Irish-owned holding company registered in the Cayman Islands and formerly known as Riverdeep. In 2022, it was acquired by Veritas Capital, a New York-based private-equity firm. Company history Ticknor and Allen, 1832 In 1832, William Ticknor and John Allen purchased a bookselling business in Boston and began to involve themselves in publishing; James T. Fields joined as a partner in 1843. Fields and Ticknor gradually gathered an impressive list of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. The duo formed a close relationship with Riverside Press, a Boston printing company owned by Henry Oscar Houghton. Houghton also founded his own publishing company with partner Melancthon Hurd in 1864, with George H. Mifflin joining the partnership in 1872. In 1878, Ticknor and Fields, now under the leadership of James R. Osgood, found itself in financial difficulties and merged its operations with Hurd and Houghton. The new partnership, named Houghton, Osgood and Company, and based in Boston's Winthrop Square, held the rights to the literary works of both publishers. When Osgood left the firm two years later, the business reemerged as Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Despite a lucrative partnership with Lawson Valentine, Houghton, Mifflin and Company still had debt it had inherited from Ticknor and Fields, so it decided to add partners. In 1884, James D. Hurd, the son of Melancthon Hurd, became a partner. In 1888, three others became partners as well: James Murray Kay, Thurlow Weed Barnes, and Henry Oscar Houghton Jr.