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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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THE DOOR
Location on door: front, panel 3
MAX M. BRESLOW
According to Guido Bruno, the bookseller and Walt Whitman collector Max Breslow (dates unknown) apprenticed at a bookshop on Eighth Avenue, opened his own shop in a cellar storefront on 23rd Street, and eventually ended up with a shop in the famous "Book Row" on Fourth Avenue called "Books for Bookish People. " Bruno described Breslow as follows in Adventures in American Bookstores (1922): "Little Max Breslow, who isn't taller than a good-sized doll and has such tiny hands that he can hardly hold two books at the same time, is so vivacious and young looking that everybody must like him if for no other reason than his continuous smile." It is possible that Breslow first met fellow bookseller Frank Shay during his time on Eighth Avenue, for there is some evidence that Shay may have spent his early days in a shop on that street.
The title page of Theodore Dreiser's Book About Myself (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922), inscribed from the author to Frank Shay and from Frank Shay to Max M. Breslow
This dual-association copy represents a chain of collaborators. Frank Shay was a long-time friend of Theodore Dreiser, and had introduced him to Horace Liveright, who published this and other Dreiser works. Shay and Breslow were linked by their love of Walt Whitman: Shay used Breslow's significant collection of Walt Whitman as the basis for his 1920 bibliography of Whitman's works.