Helene Johnson (1906-1995) was born in Boston and raised in Brookline with her cousin Dorothy West, and began to write stories and poetry, winning a contest in the Boston Chronicle. She was also given honorable mention in Opportunity, and published in Vanity Fair. She was once considered one of the best poets of the Harlem Renaissance.

Image from Poetry Foundation

The Club of Odd Volumes was formed on Mr. Vernon Street in Beacon Hill, with the objectives being “…to promote an interest in, and a love for whatever will tend to make literature attractive as given in the form of printed and illustrated volumes, to mutually assist in making researches and collections of first and rare editions, and to promote elegance in the production of Odd Volumes.”

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Estes & Lauriat's bookstore opened on Washington St. across from the Old South Church in August 1872 — just three months before the Great Fire swept through downtown “toward the new store and threatening the whole city. The partners in the young bookselling firm watched the oncoming tide of flame with dread, but … worked feverishly to remove their stock to Beacon Hill from its dangerous proximity to the fire" (Lauriat's, 1872-1922).

Image from Boston Athenaeum

In 1842, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) opened a bookshop on West St., which was located next to where the Brattle Book Shop is today. It was part bookstore, part publisher, and part literary meeting place. Probably the most well-known group that met there was the Transcendentalists at Margaret Fuller’s salon, and it was also where The Dial, the short-run Transcendentalist literary mag, was published. (Fun fact: Elizabeth’s sister Sophia Peabody married Nathaniel Hawthorne here in 1842.)