Seeing Shelley Plain

Citation

Baker, W. (2002), "Seeing Shelley Plain", Library Review, Vol. 51 No. 5, pp. 272-273. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2002.51.5.272.7

There is a growing body of literature of memoirs of book shops from, for instance, George Sims, Bertram Rota, David A. Randall, Barbara Kaye, Percy Muir, O.J. Snelling and H.P. Kraus, to name but seven bookpersons who come to mind. Seeing Shelly Plain is divided into two sections. In the first, Robert A. Wilson works on the “Phoenix book shop,” how it got started, its catalogues, discoveries, punters, publications and eventual closure. The second part is devoted to “Essays on modern poets and writers” some of whom Wilson knew. The third part “More facts about the Phoenix” consists of short biographies of “The players: writers discussed in the memoirs”; the last consists of a listing of “The Phoenix guest book”, of those Wilson encountered during his 26 years at the shop or corresponded with.

Memoirs of bookpersons and those who run shops have their own fascination: they can be veritable rich stores of information on authors, auctions, difficult idiosyncratic customers. Occasional revelations are made about the book trade and fellow book dealers and rival members of the trade. Robert Wilson’s Seeing Shelley Plain does not deviate from the established genre. There are omissions in his book. Almost nothing is said about his family, his background, how he came to be obsessed with books, the practical difficulties of the book trade, or replenishing top quality stock. From the first part we learn briefly that he had been a GI, his family had a farm and that he worked in a cuckoo clock factory before buying and opening an already apparently marvelously stocked bookshop in Greenwich Village, New York in April 1962. In fact more is gleaned about the author’s life from the dust jacket than from his book. Shortly after opening, Frances Steloff “proprietor of the legendary Gotham Book Mart, and at that time indisputably the most famous bookseller in the entire world” appeared in the shop as his first customer. A catalogue is issued, Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg appear, and so do wonderful books, manuscripts and letters. In 1965 Wilson appears in London on the first of many “book‐buying expeditions.” The immediate contacts were incredible, and manuscripts fell in his lap including Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood: where the money comes from to pay for such acquisitions the reader is not informed. Earlier Wilson mentions that he is paying off the loan for the shop!

By the late 1960s Wilson is able to run a small publishing house focussing on poetry. He has two main customers: Indiana University’s Lilly Library and the University of Nevada. Poets are in abundance, with good material, universities have pots of money and Wilson prospers. By the late 1970s “the heady days of fat budgets and government subsidies began to wane.” His building suffers from flooding. Wilson is harassed when he sells “a few letters written by W.H. Auden to one of his protégés.” So he sells the shop. The rest of the book consists of the “Publication of the Phoenix” and incidental anecdotes of famous figures ranging from Auden, to Greely, Duncan and Levertov, and Louis Zukovsky.

There’s a “Phoenix guest book” listing and a listing of “writers discussed in the memoirs” but no index. The volume is nicely produced, “designed and set by Angela Werner using the typefaces Adobe Garamond and Virile,” replete with black and white photographs of the author outside his shop at “18 Cornetta Street,” the inside of the shop, and Wilson with figures such as Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Edward Albee and others. In all, a useful if not outstanding addition to an evolving genre. For insights about the actual workings of the book trade, Snelling and Kraus are more revealing.