Argus Book Shop correspondence

The Argus Book Shop Correspondence consists of the shop's "author correspondence" files holding letters between Ben Abramson and his staff and more than four hundred writers, artists, printers, critics, and illustrators; the remainder of the shop's records were destroyed following instructions he had written into his will. While some of the folders hold single or just a few letters, Abramson had more extensive relationships with many writers and artists, including John Austen, Faith Baldwin, March Cost, Frederic Dannay, Norman Davey, Rhys Davies, August Derleth, Robin Douglas, Joan Marshall Grant, W.G. Hardy, Claude Houghton, William McFee, Henry Miller, Frank Cheyne Papé, Louis Paul, Frederic Prokosch, William Saroyan, Harold Sinclair, and John Steinbeck. Hundreds of Abramson’s typed carbon replies are present in the files, and discuss business and literary concerns, along with his philosophies and opinions on a wide range of topics. To many of the writers with whom he became close, Abramson freely dispensed personal advice. On the business end, his letters show that he regularly recommended and shipped literature to Argus patrons, including Alfred Kinsey and other scholars and authors, as well as searched for and obtained from other vendors books specifically requested by patrons. Contracts in the folders for John Anthony Carr and Stanley Marks reveal the existence of the Argus Agency: A Service for Writers, wherein Abramson acted “as a personal representative for authors and as an agent for any and all literary, dramatic, motion picture or other such material produced by them.” The largest group of letters present is those between Abramson and the writer Henry Miller (1900-1968), which cover in detail many aspects of Miller’s career, finances, and travels between 1937 and 1955. Abramson published some of Miller’s writings and sold most of his publications, as well as providing a mail-order service for sending Miller (and Miller's friends, on Miller’s account) his own works and new titles by other authors. With the Miller correspondence is a folder holding Connecticut Anthroposophical Society membership lists and redacted letters from people across the country who were attempting to purchase Miller's Tropic of Cancer (1938). In addition to publishing and retailing books, Abramson handled the sale of literary manuscripts for authors such as W. Somerset Maugham, whose file contains a price list of works available for purchase at Argus.

The collection also includes, in Series II, more than forty literary essays, poems, and book reviews which may have been submitted for an "Argus miscellany" that Abramson often discussed in his correspondence but apparently never produced. They do not appear in Abramson's journal Reading and Collecting (1936-1938), and likely date after 1938.

While the lack of financial, inventory, vendor, and publishing records keep the collection from being a complete record of the Argus Book Shop, the correspondence files present reveal how Ben Abramson developed business and personal relationships with authors, illustrators, and shop patrons, and, in particular with British authors, the obstacles he encountered while conducting business during World War II.