Gotham Book Mart was a literary landmark in New York City until it closed in 2007 - but now, its collection of about 200,000 books and manuscripts will be available to the public once again.
The University announced last month that an anonymous donor bought the Gotham Book Mart's collection, which is worth several million dollars, and donated it to Penn Libraries.Most of the inventory will be stored in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
The Gotham Book Mart was founded in 1920 by Frances Steloff and sold in 1967 to Andreas Brown. Suffering from various financial problems, the bookstore eventually closed in the spring of 2007.
According to Daniel Traister, curator of research services for the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Gotham Book Mart was one of the most important bookstores to start commercializing literary modernism.
"Because of [Gotham Book Mart's] general interest in modernism in all forms, it was possible to find not only the things you knew about [modernism] already, but also things that you didn't already know," he said.
The Gotham Book Mart materials are divided into seven packages, which are all expected to arrive at Penn by the end of the month.
"The acquisition of the Gotham Book collection will transform modern literature study at Penn," said David McKnight, the director of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. "It will fill in some important gaps that would be attractive to students and researchers."
Traister said the collection consists of literature, magazines, poetry, prose, drama, arts, music, dance and even materials related to Freudian psychology.
One of the most important items included in this collection is a "little magazine," which is a publication with a small distribution that functions as a venue for experimental avant-garde and modernist writers and artists, Traister explained.
He expects that there will be about 60,000 of these magazines in the collection, but said it is impossible to say exactly what is included due to the collection's large number of items.
It will take about three years to completely list and analyze the collection, and another several years to catalogue.
It will be a "slow, steady and careful process," Traister added.
However, in the meantime, it is possible that some of the materials will be made available to the public once they have been catalogued.
Both McKnight and Traister expect that the collection will foster various research projects at Penn.
"It will especially help students, faculty and researchers working on 20th century modernism," Traister added.
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