“The Sunwise Turn, A Modern Book Shop”
One hundred years ago today … The Women's National Book Association held a meeting at the Sunwise Turn, A Modern Book Shop, located at 51 West 44 Street (the Yale Club building).
New York Herald, 18 November 1920, p. 10. Chronicling America.
Right around this time–November 1920 according to Ted Bishop–Sunwise co-founder Madge Jemison sold her shares of the store to partner Mary Mowbray-Clarke (Osbourne, 55).
Jenison in the Sunwise Turn. Courtesy https://wnba-nyc.org/1920-2020-the-centennial-of-the-19th-amendment-and-the-solidarity-of-humanity/
The Sunwise Turn was a women-owned bookstore and, as publisher, seller, and gathering spot, an early, unofficial center for literary modernism–much like the Gotham Book Mart which we featured on September 5. The Sunwise had opened in 1916 at 2 East 31 Street and moved to 44 Street in 1919. In 1920 it played host to frequent lectures and literary gatherings, as announced that January.
New York Tribune 3 January 1920, p. 10. Chronicling America.
The store was known for eclectic and elaborately-designed publications, often, but not always, of contemporary works. One 1920 release was a book of drawings by artist and art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy, an expert on South Asian art.
Peggy Guggenheim interned at the shop in 1920; she would credit the experience with “initiating the devotion to art that would define her philanthropic career” (Bishop 17). Guggenheim was reputedly “too incompetent to work the till” (Bishop 2). It may be that she was the object of FP Adams’ ire in his “Conning Tower” column of September 1 complaining about the misspellings and misrepresentations on his bookstore bill.
References/further reading
Bishop, Ted. "The Sunwise Turn and the Social Space of the Bookstore." in Osborne, Huw. The Rise of the Modernist Bookshop: Books and the Commerce of Culture in the Twentieth Century. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2016. 31-64.
Bishop, Ted. "The Sunwise Turn and the Social Space of the Bookstore." TedBishop.com.
Jenison, Madge. Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1923.
Ohta, Yukie. NewYorkBoundBooks.com. 3 October, 2011.
–– JONATHAN GOLDMAN, NOVEMBER 18, 2020
TAGS: books, bookstore, women entrepreneurs, business, publishing, modernism, modernist literature, art, South Asian artist