The wit at the poker table tended to be less sophisticated than the luncheon banter - one can't consider the possibilities of a three card flush and simultaneously create nifties - but it was at the poker table that the Round Tablers revealed, in their firehouse funnies, their substantially small town origins. Every one of them came from the hinterlands exept my father.

"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

Marion Meade's engrossing and comprehensive biography of one of the twentieth century's most captivating women In this lively, absorbing biography, Marion Meade illuminates both the charm and the dark side of Dorothy Parker, exploring her days of wicked wittiness at the Algonquin Round Table with the likes of Robert Benchley, George Kaufman, and Harold Ross, and in Hollywood with S. J. Perelman, William Faulkner, and Lillian Hellman. At the dazzling center of it all, Meade gives us the flamboyant, self-destructive, and brilliant Dorothy Parker. This edition features a new afterword by Marion Meade.

When it comes to movie reviews, critic Violet Epps is a powerhouse voice. But that’s only because she’s learned to channel her literary hero Dorothy Parker, the most celebrated and scathing wit of the twentieth century. If only Violet could summon that kind of strength in her personal life. Violet visits the Algonquin Hotel in an attempt to find inspiration from the hallowed dining room where Dorothy Parker and so many other famous writers of the 1920s traded barbs, but she gets more than she bargained for when Parker’s feisty spirit rematerializes. An irreverent ghost with problems of her own—including a refusal to cross over to the afterlife—Mrs. Parker helps Violet face her fears, becoming in turn mentor and tormentor…and ultimately, friend. READERS GUIDE INSIDE

Robert C. Benchley's sketches and articles, published in periodicals like Life, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest humorists of his time; his influence—on contemporaries such as E. B. White, James Thurber, and S. J. Perelman, or followers like Woody Allen, Steve Martin, and Richard Pryor—has left an indelible mark on the American comic tradition. The Benchley Roundup collects those pieces, selected by Benchley's son Nathaniel, "which seem to stand up best over the years"-a compendium of the most endearing and enduring work from one of America's funniest and most penetrating wits. "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous." —Robert Benchley