Born in Scotland, James Redpath emigrated with his family to Michigan at age 17. Having taken up journalism he was invited to join Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. In 1868 he founded the Boston Lyceum Bureau (later the Redpath Lyceum Bureau), in partnership with George L. Fall, to supply the need for a central booking agency for lecturers. Mark Twain’s two marathon lecture tours (November 1869–January 1870 and October 1871–February 1872) were booked and promoted by the bureau. SLC gave up touring thereafter, but remained friendly with Redpath. The Bureau also represented many of the other leading speakers of the day, including Josh Billings, Petroleum V. Nasby, and Henry Ward Beecher. In 1875 Redpath sold the Bureau and concentrated on his activities as author, journalist, social reformer, and educator. For a time in 1885 Redpath took dictation from SLC, who was working on his Autobiography. He became an editor of the North American Review in 1886, but suffered an incapacitating stroke the next year.