D. B. Cooke & Company

City: Chicago

County: Cook

State: Illinois

Founded by David B. Cooke in 1852, D. B. Cooke & Company began in Chicago with a store containing school, miscellaneous, law, and medical books and stationery. Cooke aimed to serve the Midwest as a wholesale dealer as well as to be known as a specialist publisher of law books. By 1856, the company's success required relocation to a larger building. Between 1855 and 1861, D. B. Cooke & Company published a variety of books for the legal profession or about the westward expansion of the United States. Its imprint also appeared on the Chicago City Directory between 1858 and 1860. Cooke's store burned in 1857 but was re-opened in 1858.

Madeleine B. Stern, "Keen & Cooke: Prairie Publishers," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 42 (December 1949): 425, 428-30, 432.