The Sunwise Turn

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Sunwise Turn Bookstore at its original location at 2 E. 31st. St. circa 1916. Photograph from p. 16 of Beatrice Wood's autobiography, "I Shock Myself." Sunwise.jpg
Sunwise Turn Bookstore at its original location at 2 E. 31st. St. circa 1916. Photograph from p. 16 of Beatrice Wood's autobiography, "I Shock Myself."

The Sunwise Turn, A Modern Bookshop was a bookshop in New York City that served as a literary salon and gathering-place for F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alfred Kreymborg, Maxwell Bodenheim, Peggy Guggenheim (an intern in 1920), Theodore Dreiser, Robert Frost, Harold Loeb, John Dos Passos and others. [1] It was founded by Madge Jenison and Mary Horgan Mowbray-Clarke in 1916, and operated until 1927. As such, it is one of the first bookshops in America to be owned and operated by women. [2] Its papers — those of its founders and of the bookshop itself — are held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. [3]

Contents

Alfred R. Orage, a one-time student and teacher of the ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff, gave his first public lecture about Gurdjieff ideas at the Sunwise Turn, on January 9, 1924. Gurdjieff, himself, presented a lecture there on March 2, 1924. [4]

The bookshop showed art as well as books; Guggenheim credited the shop with spurring her love of collecting. [5]

Publishing history

In addition to acting as an exhibition and performance space, the shop published five illustrated poetry broadsides and at least ten books between 1916 - 1923.

The broadsides were the first publishing venture undertaken by the shop, and each paired an artist with a poet. Issued sequentially in 1916, the broadside series featured poems and hand-colored drawings:

  1. "Ballads for Sale" by Amy Lowell  ; drawing by Walt Kuhn
  2. "The Scientist" by Gladys Cromwell  ; drawing by John Frederick Mowbray-Clarke
  3. "Cow of Curses" by Amy Murray ; drawing by Amy Murray
  4. "The Bird Seller Praises his Bird of Paradise" by Padraic Colum  ; drawing by Herbert Crowley
  5. "Chariots" by Witter Bynner  ; drawing by Howard Coluzzi. [6]

1916 also saw the publication of Lord Dunsany's "A Night at an Inn" in conjunction with the Neighborhood Playhouse as "Neighborhood Playhouse Plays No. 1" [7]

The Sunwise Turn pioneered the publication of Indian contemporary writing in America with two collections by Ananda Coomaraswamy "The Dance of Siva: Fourteen Indian Essays" and "Prayers and Epigrams." [8] [9]

Locations

The initial location was 2 East 31st Street; in 1919 the shop moved to the Yale Club building at 51 East 44th Street, where it remained until it closed in 1927. Mowbray-Clarke, with the help of Harold and Marjorie Content Loeb, bought Jenison out in 1919/1920. (Jenison would go on to publish an account of the shop's early years, Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling [E.P. Dutton, 1923]).

In 1923, Jessie Richards Dwight (1901–1985), from Albany, became a limited partner in the store. [10] When in 1927 it proved to be insolvent, Mowbray-Clarke sold the firm with its stock to Doubleday, Page & Co. for $5,000 (~$70,595 in 2023). [3]

References

  1. ↑ Ohta, Yukie. "New York Bound Books · The Sunwise Turn: The Modern Bookshop". Newyorkboundbookstore.com. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
  2. ↑ Ted Bishop, "The Sunwise Turn and the Social Space of the Bookshop" in The Rise of the Modernist Bookshop, ed. Huw Osborne. London: Routledge, 2015
  3. 1 2 "The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers An Inventory of Records at the Harry Ransom Center". Norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
  4. ↑ Both dates are from a chronology of events held at the Sunwise Turn, obtained by Justin Duerr, an historian of that bookstore.
  5. ↑ Dearborn, Mary V. (2004). Mistress of modernism: the life of Peggy Guggenheim. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 34–35.
  6. ↑ https://hollis.harvard.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=01HVD_ALMA212192717050003941&context=L&vid=HVD2&lang=en_US&search_scope=everything&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=everything&query=any,contains,%22Sunwise%20Turn%22&offset=0
  7. ↑ A night at an inn,a play in one act. Neighborhood playhouse plays,no. 1. New York. 4 September 2021.
  8. ↑ "The dance of Siva; fourteen Indian essays". New York Sunwise Turn. 1918.
  9. ↑ Armfield, Maxwell; Coomaraswamy; Cory, Herbert E. (Herbert Ellsworth); Cromwell, Dorothea Katharine; Cromwell, Gladys; Crowley, Alice; Eccles, David Eccles; Greely, Rose; Horgan, Andrew J. "The Sunwise Turn/Mary Mowbray-Clarke Papers An Inventory of Records at the Harry Ransom Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2024-03-11.
  10. ↑ Rolle, E. Entry for Jessie Orage (née Dwight) on Rolle’s web pages on “Queer Places”. Accessed, August 16, 2025 at http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/fghij/Jessie%20Orage.html
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