|
The
FW Society of New York's reading group met in a place that was important to Joyce and to the literary life of New York City from the time it iopened in 1920. In that year, a young woman named Frances Steloff opened the
Gotham Book Mart in its first location, a few streets away from what became
its long-term home at 41 West 47th Street, a pleasing anomaly in the heart
of the diamond district where glittering show windows, orthodox Jews, and
tourists from around the world predominate. Past the cornucopia of literature in the crowded window
and down two steps, the Gotham was a calm but informal island of books in the
swirling seas of commerce outside.
The Gotham and Miss Steloff championed the experimental and challenged the
censors over the years. She supplied James Joyce's books to US readers
as they were
published, including those with legal difficulties from the US's obscenity
laws, a service she also provided for D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller's
work. She was one of the founding members of the James Joyce Society,
whose meetings continued at the Gotham till it closed, and Joyce himself occasionally ordered books directly from Miss
Steloff. The Finnegans Wake Society was
an addition to the Joyce activity that the Gotham has been host to over the
years.
Literary customers and habitués included: W.H.
Auden, Randall Jarrell, James Agee, Delmore Schwartz, Gertrude Stein, Edmund
Wilson, Nathaniel West, Wallace Stevens, Anais Nin, E.E. Cummings, Kay
Boyle, Marianne Moore, Thornton Wilder, Djuna Barnes, J.D. Salinger, Edith
and Osbert Sitwell, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Theodore Dreiser,
Eugene O'Neill, H.L. Mencken, John Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound,
Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, Kenneth
Patchen, Lawrence Durrell.
Figures from other arts also found their way to the Gotham as friends
and customers: Noel Coward, Jean Cocteau, Marlene Dietrich, Charles
Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Igor Stravinsky, George and Ira
Gershwin.
Andreas Brown, a fellow bibliographer and book lover, joined Miss Steloff in her
work, and purchased the business when Miss Steloff was 80 years old.
She remained in residence on the top floors until her death at age 101 in
April of 1989. Her desk was next to the oriental mysticism and
philosophy section, a subject in which she had a great interest.
Andreas Brown continued to run the Gotham, and it maintained its
serious and comfortable ambiance, with a variety of shelving holding a
combination of new and used books and journals on literature, the arts,
philosophy, and many special interests, ranging from Sherlockiana to a
section of works on gemstones in honor of the Gotham's location.
Literary meetings and other activities were held in the gallery on the second floor,
where a variety of exhibitions and sales were held. Perhaps the best-known display is of the late Edward Gorey's books,
original drawings, and other works.
|
