Paul Elder & Company – San Francisco bookseller & publisher, 1898-1968

Behind the Garden Wall

23 December 2025 by david

It is 1912, and a lonely woman in Vermont illustrates children’s books to take her mind off a stifling marriage. Three years later, she is an impoverished single mother, working as a mucker alongside grimy men in a lonely gold mine in the Sierra foothills. Three years after that, she is a nationally-known columnist and the highest-paid woman in the Hearst newspapers.

Who was this remarkable woman? The life story of journalist, artist, and memoirist Elsie Robinson is finally being told in full, thanks to the marvelous 2022 biography Listen, World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert. Our spotlight book today, one of Elder’s best children’s stories, has a small part in that tale.

Behind the Garden Wall is a delightful children’s book, with verses by Robert Wallace and illustrations by Elsie Robinson. Her artwork is replete with all manners of animals: geese, crows, rabbits, mice, guitar-playing frogs, dancing beetles, even mosquitos. Printed in three colors, it would still be a perfect book, 110 years after publication, to read to a young child.

Left: Elsie Robinson Crowell about 1912, when *Behind the Garden Wall* was published. Right: Elsie circa 1940, when she was a famous columnist.

Elsinore Justinia Robinson was born in 1883 in Benicia, California. Thirty years before, Benicia had briefly been the California state capitol—the old capitol building still stands—but by 1883 it had become a ‘frontier town’ with saloons and bordellos. When Elsie was nineteen, she met a visiting easterner named Christie Burnham Crowell, ten years her senior.¹

Elsie was eager to escape into the wider world, and Christie was on the rebound from the death of his first wife from an abdominal tumor at the age of 24. Their long courtship was spent convincing Christie’s parents to agree to the marriage: the devout Crowells thought her a sloppy, emotional teenager, completely unable to run a New England household. The Crowells finally agreed on the condition that Elsie spend a year at a nearby boarding school, where she would learn manners, household management, and the Bible. Elsie and Christie were married in his home town in Brattleboro, Vermont, and she gave birth to their son George in 1904. But George’s birth did not improve their marriage. When George developed asthma, Elsie pleaded to move to a warmer client for his health, but Christie refused. Elsie now realized that she was trapped: Christie would always be loyal to his parents first.

Frontispiece and title page of *Behind the Garden Wall*

Elsie proceeded to put all her emotional energy into raising George, who was often home sick from school. She kept many children’s magazines at his bedside, including a brand-new title that would become his favorite: John Martin’s Letters. It was published by none other than Morgan Shepard, now living back in his home town of New York City after his years with Paul Elder in San Francisco. Elsie also began writing her own stories for George, and illustrated them with children and animals. She screwed up the courage to write to Shepard, asking whether her stories might be good enough to publish. She was astonished when Shepard replied, saying that yes, he’d very much like to publish her story, and more like it. Elsie began to write regularly for John Martin’s Letters in 1911 under the pseudonym “Comfy Lady.”

In 1912, Elsie was contacted by Robert Wallace, an inmate at the Brattleboro Retreat, a former insane asylum. He was trying to cure his alcoholism, in part by writing children’s stories, and he was looking for an illustrator. Elsie visited him at the Retreat, and they began working on a book together, which would become Behind the Garden Wall.

Elsie and Robert realized that they attracted to each other. They were also both married to people who paid little attention to them. As the book neared completion, they devised an escape plan. Robert wanted to get out of the asylum, and Elsie could file a petition to be a guardian. Elsie wanted to return to California, both for her son’s health and for her own sanity. Robert casually proposed a trip to California over a chess game with Christie, Elsie and George coming along to visit her family in Benicia. Christie agreed, oblivious of their scheme. Within a few weeks, Elsie, George, and Robert were on a train to California, never to return. Eventually, it became clear to Christie that Robert and Elsie were living together, and he initiated divorce proceedings. But for more on Elsie’s life story, you’ll need to read Listen, World!

It’s unknown why Paul Elder ended up publishing Behind the Garden Wall, but the most likely scenario is that Morgan Shepard referred Elsie to Elder, knowing that Elder had the means to properly publish and market the book. Once in California, Elsie and Robert wrote another children’s book, Within the Deep Dark Woods, published later in 1913, but by Blair-Murdock, not Paul Elder. Perhaps Morgan Shepard referred Elsie to both publishers and they agreed to do one book with each?

Cover of “Listen, World!” the new biography of Elsie Robinson by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert

1
This and other biographical details are from Listen World!, by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert, Seal Press, 2022

Paul Elder’s Book Forum

8 December 20255 December 2025 by david

In October 1968, Paul Elder Jr. sold the 70-year-old family business to Brentano’s. The bookstore, however, remained open under the Paul Elder name for another 14 months, closing for good on 29 December 1969. Just one week later, be it by chance or design, Paul Elder began a new chapter as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. The new column was called “Paul Elder’s Book Forum.”

The Book Forum appeared daily alongside other Examiner columnists such as Guy Wright, Sydney J. Harris, Bob Considine, and Dick Nolan. The column debuted on 5 January 1970, and began with this introduction:

It shall be the purpose of this book column to bring you informative, timely and complete coverage of new publications and events of interest in the book world—to evolve a true book forum by drawing on the best minds in this sophisticated area with guest reviews by talented members in academic and literary fields.

Paul Elder’s Book Forum of 14 January 1970, opposite a Sydney J. Harris column on women journalists

Elder then warmly reviewed Charlotte Armstrong’s suspense novel The Protege, saying “when one has been reading with enjoyment everything an author has written for 20 years or so, he can’t be blamed for feeling a personal loss when that author dies.” Armstrong had passed away six months earlier at the age of 64. Over the following weeks and months, the column’s book reviews covered a wide range of topics, including art, politics, public school integration, ancient Rome, celebrities, dictionaries, civic planning, and famous criminal cases.

Equally illuminating, in your editor’s opinion, are the other columns on the page. To give just one example: on 14 January 1970, running opposite Elder’s column reviewing an account of the ordeal of the crew of the captured spy ship USS Pueblo, is a piece by Sydney J. Harris applauding Sigma Delta Chi’s (the national journalism society) long-overdue decision to admit women as members. Harris notes in particular that women “understand men far better than other men do; the best interviews I have read have been conducted by women, with devastating accuracy.” He calls out Gloria Steinem as one of several women who “have proved that politics, city planning, transportation, and the other ‘heavy’ subjects of urban life can be dealth with as dexterously and insightfully (if not more so) by women as by men.”

It appears that the Book Forum ran for just one year. The last known installment appeared on 12 January 1971.

The last known installment, 12 January 1971

I’m Writing a Book!

10 August 20259 August 2025 by david

My upcoming book, A Western Publisher: Paul Elder & Company (1898-1968), is scheduled for publication in 2026 by the Book Club of California. It will include a biography, tours of Elder’s bookstores, descriptions of selected publications, and lots of photographs. I can’t wait!

Updates will be posted here as the publication date approaches.

Antigone

10 August 202528 March 2025 by david

On the 17th and 19th of April 1902, Stanford University presented the ancient Greek tragedy Antigone of Sophocles—in the original Greek—with choral music by 19th-century composer Felix Mendelssohn. The actors were instructors and students of the Greek department, the musicians were the University orchestra, and the chorus were mostly members of the Glee Club. They rehearsed for four months and made their own costumes. In total, more than 120 students were involved, about 8% of the entire student body.

The two performances, at 1,500-seat Assembly Hall, were so successful that the play was taken on the road to Southern California (cast and crew filled two railroad cars) where it was performed in Los Angeles on April 23rd, Pasadena on the 24th, and Santa Barbara on the 25th. The road trip expenses were covered by the profits from the Stanford performances, and the University officially granted a week’s leave of absence for the performers.¹ Two weeks later, a third presentation was given at Stanford on May 8th, with a final performance in Berkeley on May 10th in 3,000-seat Harmon Gymnasium.

Title page of *The Antigone of Sophocles*

The entire project was the brainchild of Classics Professors Augustus Taber Murray and Henry Rushton Fairclough. They were out to show that Stanford University, just one decade old, could provide a classical education equal to any of the older, more famous universities. They were definitely thinking big: in addition to the wildly successful performances, Murray and Fairclough also arranged for the publication of two books, both issued by Paul Elder. (Murray and Henry Rolfe, mentioned below, also wrote for Impressions, Elder’s in-house magazine.)

The first book, The Antigone of Sophocles, featured Murray’s and Fairclough’s own English translation of the Greek text. As they wrote in their preface, “this translation was first undertaken with a view to providing the general public with a libretto for the presentation of Antigone, which is to be given in the original Greek at the University on the 17th and 19th of next month. It is hoped, however, that its publication will awaken or revive interest in ‘Our Sophocles, the royal,’ among cultivated people generally.” This volume was published by Elder & Shepard in March 1902, and printed by the Twentieth Century Press. The production & distribution of the book must have been very speedy indeed, given the specific “next month” dates mentioned in the preface.

The second book, Antigone, is an account of the production and performance itself, in four sections:

The Antigone at Stanford Unviersity, H. W. Rolfe
Antigone: A Dramatic Study, A. T. Murray
The Choral Side of Antigone, H. R. Fairclough
Programme of the Original Presentations at Stanford University

The book is also illustrated with twenty photographs, including seven of 20-year-old Eunice Cooksey, who was cast in the title role. Murray played Creon, Antigone’s uncle and the new King, while Fairclough was the coryphæus, the leader of the chorus. The book’s formal title, which appears on both the cover and title page, is in Greek: ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΗ, but is anglicized as Antigone on every page head and chapter head. As it happens, this book was in production just as “Elder & Shepard” was transitioning to “Paul Elder & Company,” and thus the book appeared in 1903 under the PE&Co imprint.

Frontispiece and title page of *Antigone*

As part of this post, I must admit a significant mistake: until today, I had not studied these two books closely, and had blithely assumed that they were two editions of the same work; thus Antigone only appeared once on the checklist, as item #10. Ooof! With the realization that these are two completely different books—albeit concerning the same happy event—I have now adjusted the checklist. Because it has the same name as the original listing, the 1903 Paul Elder & Company Antigone remains as #10, while the 1902 Elder & Shepard Antigone of Sophocles has become checklist #422. Each entry now refers to the other, in order to make it clear that there have been corrections since the time of the printed checklists.

Augustus Taber Murray (1866-1940) was born in New York City. He earned his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University with a dissertation on Aristophanes. He also studied in Germany before becoming Professor of Greek at Earlham College (1888-90), Colorado College (1891-92), and then at Stanford, where he remained for the next forty years. Among his publications were translations of the Iliad and Odyssey for the Loeb Classical Library. He was also a prominent Quaker minister and spent 1929 and 1930 in Washington as pastor to President Herbert Hoover, a personal friend. Murray married Nella Howland Gifford in 1881; they had five children. He is buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, California.²

Henry Rushton Fairclough (1862-1938) was born in Barrie, Ontario, not far from Toronto. In 1893 he left Canada to become Associate Professor of Greek and Latin at Stanford, where he spent the rest of his career. During World War I, he served in the American Red Cross in Switzerland and Montenegro. In 1922, he was named Professor of Classical Literature at Stanford. He was also guest professor of Latin and Greek at Harvard, and president of the American Philological Association. His own research was on Roman poets, and he published translations and bilingual editions of Plautus, Terence, Virgil, and Horace. Fairclough married Frederica Emily Blanche Allen in 1888 and had one daughter with her. After her death, he married Mary Charlotte Holly in 1930. In 1941, his posthumous autobiography “Warming Both Hands” was published, where he described his experiences during the War. Fairclough is buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.³

Henry Winchester Rolfe (1858-1945) was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He was an English instructor at Cornell University (1883-85), professor of Latin at Swarthmore College (1885-90), lecturer in Latin literature at the University of Pennsylvania (1891-92), and associate professor of Greek at Stanford University (1900-10). His publications include an 1898 biography of Petrarch. Rolfe married Bertha Napier Colt in 1886; they had three daughters. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.⁴

Eunice Cooksey as Antigone [Stanford Archives]

Eunice Cooksey (1881-1946) was born in New York City. While a student at Stanford, she lived on campus with her parents in what is now Synergy House. She married John Dane about 1908. Later in her life, back in New York, she was a long-time member of the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club. Paradoxically, to our modern eyes, Eunice was also Chair of the Jamaica Plain Anti-Suffrage Association (JPASA). Today the idea of women being against a woman’s right to vote is bewildering, but the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of the Suffrage to Women (MAOFESW) was founded in 1895 and worked with JPASA for twenty-four years until suffrage was passed nationally in 1919. Eunice is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.⁵

Page 3 of *The Antigone of Sophocles*. These are the only words printed in Greek in the book, from a speech by Antigone: “For not of to-day or yesterday, but for eternity is their [the gods’ laws] life, and no one knows the hour of their birth”

Page 4 of *The Antigone of Sophocles*, mentioning the upcoming performances

Antigone is sentenced to be entombed by her uncle Creon. [Stanford Archives]

Pages 1 of *Antigone*, mentioning the successful performances

Page 4 of *Antigone*, with Antigone and her sister Ismene.

1
“The Case For Classics,” 125 Stanford Stories #63, https://125.stanford.edu/the-case-for-classics/
2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Taber_Murray
3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Rushton_Fairclough
4
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3s20121x/
5
https://loring-greenough.org/suffrage-anti-suffrage-in-jamaica-plain/

Islanded

1 October 202430 September 2024 by david

In early 1934, a monthly literary magazine called Dune Forum appeared out of Oceano, a tiny, unincorporated seaside community in San Luis Obispo County, California. Oceano had hitherto been known as the home of a utopian Theosophical religious community called Halcyon, founded in 1903. Dune Forum was sold at a select few of California’s literary hotspots, including Paul Elder’s bookstore, UC Berkeley and Stanford University, and bookstores in Santa Cruz, Carmel, Ojai, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. The magazine only lasted seven issues, but included contributions from such notables as poet Robin Lampson, musician John Cage, and poet John Varian of the Halcyon community.

The February 1934 issue of Dune Forum contained this note in a section called “Northern Lights:”

San Francisco never ceases to delight us. As this magazine is printed there, we have to attend its monthly rebirth, and each time we journey thither, further proofs of its fascination crowd in upon us, each with a new surprise. This trip is already full of memories. Mrs. Maflo [Mary Florence] Ryan gave a benefit reception for young Dwight Strickland, a cynical poet in the contemporary stream of defeatism, yet curiously remindful of the mauve decade. His book of verse, “Islanded” has recently been brought out by Paul Elder, and for much of its contents, is worthy of your attention. Better still if you could hear him recite his Swinburnianly modernistic lyrics. A born showman, this Strickland never misses a chance to flabbergast or charm, or otherwise capture the attention of his audience.¹

Frontispiece and title page of “Islanded”

That same week, the Mill Valley Record reported:

Dwight Strickland, the young California poet whose work is earnestly noted by bay region people, is soon to tour the south, where he will appear before distinguished clubs in dramatic presentation of his latest volume of verse “Islanded.” He is to be the guest of and entertainer for the Chelsea Circle in San Francisco tomorrow night. Mr. Strickland expresses himself in highly colorful imagery and distinctive rhythms. In these two qualities, the mantel of Vachel Lindsay seems to have fallen upon him. Lindsay pioneered in a new style which won great acceptance. Strickland is receiving complimentary support from the press. A limited number of autographed copies of his work may be had at Paul Elder’s.²

Presumed standard binding of “Islanded,” with silver paper over boards, title and author name stamped in black.

And in April, the Los Angeles Times noted:

From San Francisco comes young Dwight Strickland, whose volume of verse, “Islanded,” has been issued by Paul Elder. Mr. Strickland believes in the importance of reading verse aloud, and he follows Vachel Lindsay in this faith. But, unlike the midwestern poet, he reads from the work of other poets as well as from his own.³

Islanded was issued in at least three bindings: silver paper on boards with title and name stamped in black, cloth on boards without stamped title, and, most unusually, copper foil over boards with gold-stamped title and author—the only such binding that Paul Elder & Company ever issued. The poetry inside is often printed with the avant-garde typography pioneered by E. E. Cummings in the 1920s, and one imagines that our born showman’s reading style attempted to convey that typography to his listeners.

Alternate cover of “Islanded,” with orange and black cloth over boards, but with no words stamped on the cover.

Due to financial difficulties, Paul Elder retired from publishing in 1918. At rare intervals afterwards, he issued an occasional title: three in the 1920s, and six in the 1930s. Presumably they were all vanity publications, but few records survive so it is difficult to be certain. When Islanded was published in 1933, it was the middle of the Great Depression, and Paul Elder still had money problems behind the scenes, so it’s hard to imagine Elder fronting the costs for this book, especially with the multiple cover designs.

Dwight Jensen Strickland was born in Niles, Michigan on 18 June 1907, the third of four children of the Rev. Arthur Strickland and Carolyn Jensen. Little is known about him aside from what can be pieced together by public documents. The family moved often, and as a boy Dwight also lived in Indiana, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. After his poetry reading tour in 1934, he moved to New York City, but in 1940 was living with his father in Philadelphia. In 1946, he married Louise I. Wetherby (1909-64) in California. Dwight Strickland died on 22 August 1963 in Los Angeles at the age of 56, and is buried alongside Louise at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Pages 8-9 “Islanded,” with the final stanzas of the title poem “Islanded” at left, and distinctive typography.

Signed limitation page, and table of contents

1
Dune Forum, vol. 1, no. 2, 15 Feb 1934, p56.
2
Mill Valley Record, Volume XXXV, Number 51, 9 February 1934
3
Los Angeles Times, 8 Apr 1934