The Globe Corner Bookstores are operated by The Old Corner Bookstore, Inc. The company's first store was located in downtown Boston at the corner of School and Washington Streets -- a location which aquired historic literary significance as the birthplace of the The Old Corner Bookstore in 1829.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the partnership of William D. Ticknor and James T. Fields earned for The Old Corner Bookstore a reputation as the most respected bookselling and publishing house in America. Fields believed that a market for fine literature existed in the United States, and sought to establish an equitable method for making that literature available. He introduced the current system of royalties to compensate first American and then English authors for their efforts. This was no small innovation: most English writing published in America at the time came out in pirated editions, simply because there was no legal sanction to prevent it. Fields's system established strong permanent bonds between the firm and first rate writers from both countries. Ticknor and Fields also became magazine publishers by taking over The Atlantic Monthly.

During the heyday of The Old Corner Bookstore in the 19th century, a stream of renowned personalities gathered in the shop to visit with their publishers and friends, to gossip and to browse. Familiar faces included Holmes, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, and when they were in the United States, Thackeray and Dickens. An endless list of notable ministers, lecturers, editors, performers, essayists, poets, novelists, historians, and scientists dropped in. It was said that, "with a little exaggeration all Boston may be said to pass through The Old Corner Bookstore in a day."

In 1865 when Ticknor and Fields moved away from the Old Corner site, they left bookselling and publishing in a very healthy state. E.P. Dutton, A. Williams & Co., Damrell & Upham and others who followed them in the building were determined to continue the process begun in the 1840's. With the arrival of the twentieth century, the proprietors of The Old Corner moved their business to Bromfield Street, and the building at School and Washington began a steady decline.