Word: grolier
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...sight of a small, somewhat bedraggled white dog named Jessica greets most students hurrying down Plympton Street towards the Yard. On sunny days Jessica often lays quietly on the steps of the Grolier Poetry Shop. It was from these steps that, years ago, a 15 year-old Louisa Solano first peered into the store, and was struck by the unshakable feeling that someday she would own the place...
...does now. Perhaps Adrian Gambet and Gordon Cairnie, who founded the Grolier in 1927, would scarcely recognize it today. The original shop was not a poetry shop, but rather a place for overseas books, fine printing and contemporary limited editions. By the 1950s, it had become an established gathering place for writers, poets and students. Members of the Harvard Advocate were especially frequent visitors. The Grolier wasn’t really a place to purchase books, for sales were almost nonexistent and Cairnie often failed to collect payments on the sales he made. Instead, it was a place...
...Harvard. If the person was female, he preferred that she be attractive and the wife of one of the writers, as he subscribed to the prevailing idea that women didn’t write first-rate literature. With only a few exceptions, female poets were turned away from the Grolier, often enduring sexist comments from the male poets who made passes at them...
After working at the Grolier for many years, Solano assumed ownership on January 30, 1974, after Cairnie’s death. It took only two days as owner for her starry-eyed idealism for the endeavor to fade. Cairnie had lost the back room of the store to the Harvard Book Store, and torrent of visitors from Harvard had slowed to a trickle. The boards on the floor creaked “like a ship in full sail.” While it was immensely comforting to those who already knew and loved the place, it was an inescapable distraction...
...Grolier Poetry Shop...