University of Texas at Austin

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

Identified individuals are represented by a biographical sketch, a list of connections to other signatures, and, in most cases, an artifact from the Ransom Centers collections. Help us identify more signatures by submitting your suggested identification.

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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

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THE DOOR
Location on door: front, panel 3
CONNECTIONS

Fiction Writers

Humorists

Magazine Editors

Poets

BERTON BRALEY

The prolific poet Berton Braley (1882-1966) was born and raised in Wisconsin. He worked in magazine publishing in the early years of his career and worked as a war correspondent in England and France during World War I. His work appeared in popular periodicals too numerous to name. His poetry was unapologetically conventional and covered myriad subjects, often related to political and social issues of the day. Also a successful writer of stories and non-fiction prose, he published more than 20 books throughout his long career.

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    Creator: Braley, Berton, 1882-1966

    Title: Fragment of a clipping of Berton Braley's satirical poem "Mencken Nathan and God" on the Greenwich Village Bookshop Door

    Material Type: Door

    ADA Caption: Fragment of a clipping of Berton Braley's satirical poem "Mencken Nathan and God" on the Greenwich Village Bookshop Door


    Curatorial Department: Costumes and Personal Effects Collection

    Collection Name: Christopher Morley Collection

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A fragment of Berton Braley's "Mencken, Nathan, and God" on the bookshop door

Reprinted from the New York Sun (date unknown), this poem satirizes the powerful magazine editors H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, who co-edited the magazine the Smart Set and in 1924 co-founded the American Mercury. It also includes a gentle dig at novelist Theodore Dreiser. In its entirety, it reads as follows:

 

There were three that sailed away one night
Far from the maddening throng;
And two of the three were always right
And everyone else was wrong
But they took another along, these two
To bear them company,
For he was the only One who ever knew
Why the other two should be;
And so they sailed away, these three
Mencken
Nathan
And God.


And the two they talked of the aims of Art,
Which they alone understood;
And they quite agreed from the start
That nothing was any good
Except some novels that Dreiser wrote
And some plays from Germany.
When God objected they rocked the boat
And dropped him into the sea,
"For you have no critical facultee,"
Said Mencken
And Nathan
To God.

The two came cheerfully sailing home
Over the surging tide.
And trod once more on their native loam
Wholly self-satisfied;
And the little group that calls them great
Welcomed them fawningly,
Though why the rest of us tolerate
This precious pair must be
Something nobody else can see
But Mencken
And Nathan
And God!