"That is the thing about New York," wrote Dorothy Parker in 1928. "It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day." Now you can journey back there, in time, to a grand city teeming with hidden bars, luxurious movie palaces, and dazzling skyscrapers. In these places, Dorothy Parker and her cohorts in the Vicious Circle at the infamous Algonquin Round Table sharpened their wit, polished their writing, and captured the energy and elegance of the time. Robert Benchley, Parker’s best friend, became the first managing editor of Vanity Fair before Irving Berlin spotted him onstage in a Vicious Circle revue and helped launch his acting career. Edna Ferber, an occasional member of the group, wrote the Pulitzer-winning bestseller So Big as well as Show Boat and Cimarron. Jane Grant pressed her first husband, Harold Ross, into starting The New Yorker. Neysa McMein, reputedly “rode elephants in circus parades and dashed from her studio to follow passing fire engines.” Dorothy Parker wrote for Vanity Fair and Vogue before ascending the throne as queen of the Round Table, earning everlasting fame (but rather less fortune) for her award-winning short stories and unforgettable poems. Alexander Woollcott, the centerpiece of the group, worked as drama critic for the Times and the World, wrote profiles of his friends for The New Yorker, and lives on today as Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Explore their favorite salons and saloons, their homes and offices (most still standing), while learning about their colorful careers and private lives. Packed with archival photos, drawings, and other images--including never-before-published material--this illustrated historical guide includes current information on all locations. Use it to retrace the footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table, and you’ll discover that the golden age of Gotham still surrounds us.

In June 1919, the Algonquin Hotel became the site of the daily meetings of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of journalists, authors, publicists and actors who gathered to exchange bon mots over lunch in the main dining room. The group met almost daily for the better part of ten years. Some of the core members of the “Vicious Circle” included Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Jane Grant, Ruth Hale, George S. Kaufman, Harpo Marx, Neysa McMein, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, Robert E. Sherwood and Alexander Woollcott. George S. Kaufman, Heywood Broun, and Edna Ferber, who influenced writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, were also a part of the August assembly, and as founders of The New Yorker magazine, all hotel guests receive free copies to this day. Frank Case, owner of the Algonquin Hotel from 1907 until his death in 1946, ensured a daily luncheon for the talented group of young writers by treating them to free celery and popovers, and they were provided with their own table and waiter. All members were affiliated with the Algonquin Round Table, although they referred to themselves as the Vicious Circle. In this memoir, first published in 1951, Frank Case’s daughter Margaret Case Harriman recounts the diverting history of what was an innocent lunch group at her father’s hotel and illustrates how it grew to become an important factor in literature, the theatre, and American wit and humor... “A lively, chatty, entertaining work, touched with nostalgia.”—Chicago Sunday Tribune “Mrs. Harriman brings vividly to mind and to memory some of the most vivid people who ever sat around a table...She writes with enthusiasm and charm.”—New York Herald Tribune Book Review “Phenomenal...Congrats, as Connolly says, from the Bunch.”—Franklin P. Adams “A lovingly observed and brilliantly written chronicle of an era that didn’t know it was one.”—Deems Taylo

"I love a martini— But two at the most. Three, I’m under the table; Four, I’m under the host." Raise a glass to Dorothy Parker’s wit and wisdom. Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, founder and president of the Dorothy Parker Society, gives us an intoxicating new look at the doyenne of the ripping riposte through the lens she most preferred: the bottom of a glass. A bar book for Parker enthusiasts and literary tipplers alike, Under the Table offers a unique take on Mrs. Parker, the Algonquin Round Table, and the Jazz Age by celebrating the cocktails that she, her bitter friends, and sweetest enemies enjoyed. Each entry of this delicious compendium offers a fascinating and lively history of a period cocktail, a complete recipe, and the characters associated with it. The book also features a special selection of twenty first–century speakeasy-style recipes from the country’s top mixologists. Topping it off are excerpts from Parker’s poems, stories, and other writings that will allow you to enjoy her world from the speakeasies of New York City to the watering holes of Hollywood.

Taking the reader through the New York that inspired, and was in turn inspired by, the formidable Mrs. Parker, this guide uses rarely seen archival photographs from her life to illustrate Dorothy Parker's development as a writer, a formidable wit, and a public persona. Her favorite bars and salons as well as her homes and offices, most of which ...

The Legendary Writers of the "Vicious Circle" Collected Together For the First Time "The Algonquin was a refuge for the brightest authors, editors, critics, columnists, artists, financiers, composers, directors, producers and actors of the times. The dining-room corner was a hot bed of raconteurs and conversationalists." -Harpo Marx In Jazz Age New York City, no literary lights burned more brightly than those of the legendary Algonquin Round Table. Now between covers for the first time is a collection of writing by 16 members of the group, an all-star gathering that took 90 years to come together. Many of these pieces have never been published before; plucked from private family collections and "lost" pieces from obscure periodicals. ? Humor pieces by Robert Benchley, Franklin P. Adams, Heywood Broun, Frank Sullivan and Donald Ogden Stewart. ? Criticism from Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman and Robert E. Sherwood. ? Short fiction by Laurence Stallings and Pulitzer Prize-winners Edna Ferber and Margaret Leech. ? Journalism from Alexander Woollcott, Ruth Hale and Deems Taylor. ? Poetry by Adams, Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker and John V. A. Weaver. With a foreword by Nat Benchley.

One morning legendary wit Dorothy Parker discovers someone under Manhattan's famed Algonquin Round Table. A little early for a passed out drunk, isn't it? But he's not dead drunk, just dead. When a charming writer from Mississippi named Billy Faulkner becomes a suspect in the murder, Dorothy decides to dabble in a little detective work, enlisting her literary cohorts. It's up to the Algonquins to outwit the true culprit-preferably before cocktail hour-and before the clever killer turns the tables on them.