The Boston publisher James R. Osgood started out as a clerk with Ticknor and Fields in 1855, later becoming a partner. After Fields died in 1870, the firm was reorganized as James R. Osgood and Co. In 1877 Osgood published a small book by Mark Twain, A True Story. Business setbacks drove the firm out of business, but it reorganized under the same name in 1880, publishing works by William Dean Howells, George Washington Cable, and Walt Whitman. In 1881 he published Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and, the following year, The Stolen White Elephant. Osgood traveled with SLC down the Mississippi, and in 1883 published the book that resulted from that trip, Life on the Mississippi. Its sales disappointed SLC, who never published with Osgood again. Osgood was well loved by his authors, but his career was marred by debt, mismanagement, and bankruptcy. He spent his last years in London.