University of Texas at Austin

The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925
CONNECTIONS

Each signature may be linked to the others by up to 53 thematic connections. Some are common to many signatures; others highlight unusual, yet notable, associations and interests. Friendships are not represented because so many signers were friends. Go to "The Bohemians" to view and interact with all 53 connections.

X



Franklin Abbott

Achmed Abdullah

Mary Aldis

George William Amis

Sherwood Anderson

Egmont Arens

Mary Austin

Eugene S. Bagger

Bardar

Winslow M. Bell

William Rose Benét

Florence Blackstone

Paul J. Blackstone

David William Bone

Albert Boni

Charles Boni

Ernest Augustus Boyd

Will Bradley

Berton Braley

Max M. Breslow

Heywood Broun

Albert Brush

Arthur Caesar

Henry Seidel Canby

Jonathan Cape

Gene Carr

Oscar Edward Cesare

Christine Challenger

Betty Ross Clarke

Helen Louise Cohen

Alta May Coleman

Seward Collins

Frank Conroy

George Cram Cook

John Cournos

Bosworth Crocker

J. Vincent Crowne

Homer Croy

Mary Carolyn Davies

Helena Smith Dayton

Fred Erving Dayton

Floyd Dell

S. A. DeWitt

Roy Dickinson

Charles Divine

Alice Willits Donaldson

John Dos Passos

Theodore Dreiser

Joseph Drum

Robert L. Eaton

Laurie York Erskine

Wilfred Ewart

Henry Guy Fangel

John Chipman Farrar

Hugh Ferriss

Arthur Davison Ficke

John Bernard Flannagan

Dwight Franklin

James Earle Fraser

Joseph Lewis French

Robert Frothingham

Barney Gallant

Porter Garnett

Susan Glaspell

Montague Glass

Joseph Gollomb

Herbert S. Gorman

Stephen Graham

Dorothy L. A. Grant

Harry Wagstaff Gribble

William Gropper

Louise Closser Hale

Harry Hansen

Sadakichi Hartmann

Josephine Herbst

John Herrmann

W. E. Hill

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Robert Cortes Holliday

Terence Holliday

Guy Holt

Holland Hudson

Peter Lord Templeton Hunt

Frank Townsend Hutchens

Lewis Jackson

Norman Jacobsen

Rutger Bleecker Jewett

Orrick Johns

Merle De Vore Johnson

Jeanne Judson

Harry Kemp

Bernice Lesbia Kenyon

John G. Kidd

William A. (William Albion) Kittredge

Eastwood Lane

Lawrence Langner

Christian Leden

Courtenay Lemon

Sinclair Lewis

Ludwig Lewisohn

Max Liebermann

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

Preston Lockwood

Hendrick Willem Van Loon

Lingard Loud

Pierre Loving

Orson Lowell

C. R. Macauley

Kenneth Macgowan

Lawton Mackall

Hector MacQuarrie

John Albert Macy

Jane Mander

Don Marquis

H. A. Mathes

William McFee

Alexander McKay

Hawley McLanahan

Charles M. McLean

Ada Jaffray McVickar

Scudder Middleton

George Middleton

John Mistletoe

Roy Mitchell

Christopher Morley

Robert Nathan

Dudley Nichols

Robert Nichols

Charles Norman

Joseph Jefferson O'Neil

Florence O'Neill

Ivan Opffer

Martha Ostenso

Lou Paley

Edmund Lester Pearson

Basil H. Pillard

Ethel McClellan Plummer

Alexander Popini

William MacLeod Raine

Ben Ray Redman

Charles J. Reed

Lola Ridge

Felix Riesenberg

W. Adolphe Roberts

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin (Ted) Meade Robinson

Bruce Rogers

L. Stuart Rose

Herb Roth

Edward Royce

Tony Sarg

Jacob Salwyn Schapiro

Walter Schnackenberg

Thomas Seltzer

Fern Forrester Shay

Margaret Badollet Caldwell Shotwell

Emil Siebern

Upton Sinclair

John Sloan

Thorne Smith

David Tosh Smith

Robert A. Smith

Charles Somerville

Vincent Starrett

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Donald Ogden Stewart

Gordon Stiles

Emily Strunsky

Genevieve Taggard

Gardner Teall

Sara Teasdale

Lloyd M. Thomas

Basil Thompson

Paul Thompson

Helen Thurlow

Adolph Treidler

Peter Underhill

Harvey P. Vaughn

Walter Vodges

C. A. Voight

Mary Heaton Vorse

Webb Waldron

J. Leeming Walker

Foster Ware

John V. A. Weaver

Luther E. Widen

Edward Arthur Wilson

Lily Winner

Robert L. Wolf

Cuthbert Wright

Zorach

Theodore F. Zucker

X

THE DOOR
CONNECTIONS:

BOOKSELLERS

George William Amis

Egmont Arens

Albert Boni

Charles Boni

Max M. Breslow

Albert Brush

Seward Collins

Barney Gallant

Dorothy L. A. Grant

Robert Cortes Holliday

Terence Holliday

Guy Holt

John G. Kidd

Hector MacQuarrie

Ada Jaffray McVickar

Lou Paley

Bookshop owners and publishers’ salesmen are the two types of booksellers to be found on the door. In the early 1920s, the Village, as well as other neighborhoods in the city, were filled with small bookstores, stalls, and magazine stands. Many were ephemeral like Frank Shay’s, lasting only a few months or a few years, and others moved from one neighborhood to another as rents and demographics changed. One little-bookshop trend of the moment seems to reveal itself among the smaller bookshops: owners giving their shops their own full names. At the same time as Frank Shay’s Bookshop was in business, “Hector MacQuarrie’s Book Shop” and “Dorothy Grant’s Bookshop” were founded.

 

 

 

Several owners of small bookshops signed Shay’s door. Robert Cortes Holliday, in his 1922 guide The Business of Writing, summarized the little bookshop ethos as follows:

 

[p style="margin-left: 20px;">People who run speciality booshops tell you a number of interesting things. The owner of a little bookshop, for one thing, usually wants his shop to stay a small bookshop. He wins his customers’ confidence; they put themselves into his hands, and are grateful to him. He does not have to crawl; he is the master of his profession; those who enter ‘can be nasty somewhere else.’ There is very little risk in a specialty bookshop, it seems, of losing money; absolutely free credit usually is given; and everybody pays up. The little bookshops co-operate with one another: getting books from each other; sending customers to each other. And finally, there seems to be something like a conspiracy among them against, as one of them put it, best sellers in a bad sense.’ ‘But, I asked, ‘if someone wanted a copy of a sensational best seller wouldn’t you get it for him?’ ‘Well.’ the young woman replied, ‘we might get it for him, but we’d inquire into his motives.’”

 

 

Frank Shay, notably, did not appear to stigmatize bestsellers in his little shop. He carried them and even allowed their authors to sign his door.

X


X

  • View larger image
  • X


    Title: "The Bookstore Blues" in The Greenwich Villager

     

    Imprint: 1.1 (9 July 1921)

    Item Date: 1921

    Material Type: Newspapers


    Curatorial Department: Vertical File

    Collection Name: Christopher Morley Collection

    Stack Location: Box 601, Folder 205

    Copyright Notices: Some of the documents shown here are subject to U. S. copyright law. It is the user's sole responsibility to contact the copyright holder and secure any necessary copyright permission to publish documents, texts, and images from any holders of rights in these materials. As the owner of the physical object (not the underlying copyright), the Ransom Center requires that you also contact us if you wish to reproduce an image shown here in a print publication or electronically.


    Every effort has been made to trace copyright ownership and to obtain permission for reproduction. If you believe you are the copyright owner of an item on this site, and we have not requested your permission, please contact us.



    X

  • View metadata

"The Bookstore Blues" in The Greenwich Villager, 1921