Shakespeare House mystery

Does anyone know anything about the Shakespeare
House?

This publishing company fascinates me, and
I would like to know more about it. Because of the
high caliber of its publications, I find myself wondering
if some illustrious editor or publisher was behind it,
and I would also like to know if the Shakespeare
House was a subsidiary of, or was otherwise
funded by, one of the larger publishers..

One of the curious things about the Shakespeare
House is that so many, perhaps all, of its output
is dated 1951. That almost suggests that someone
got the company off in a big way in 1951, and then
perhaps the house failed shortly after that.

The address I have for the Shakespeare House is
575 Madison Ave., New York 22. My suspicion is
that this was a skyscraper which contained a
number of publishing companies.

Many of the books published by the Shakespeare
House were French translations. That much I
learned from the listings in Abe.com. The
house also published non-French classics, at
least some of them probably being in the public
domain in 1951. It may be that ALL their output
was public domain, but I don't enough information
at this time to state that as a fact.

The book of theirs I have seen is THE COLLECTED
WORKS OF PIERRE LOUYS. No translator is
credited, lending support to my suspicion that
Shakespeare House may have stayed with
public domain works.

The Pierre Louys' book obviously was not an
expensive edition in its day, but the designer is
to be credited for achieving a classy look, with
a wonderful little picture of the Bard on the
bottom right of the front cover. More specifically,
Shakespeare's head and shoulders are
depicted in gilt against a blue background in
which can be seen three stars, also in gilt.
The circular picture is about the size of a half
dollar, and seems to have been created by
a process similar to that used in many pictorial
covers. The cover might be said to be in
quarter calf, though frankly, I suspect it for
a skiver, if indeed the cover is part
leather at all.

Most of the Shakespeare House listings I found
in Abe.com are not that expensive, with almost
all of them ranging from five to forty dollars.
However, I thought it was interesting that one
dealer is offering a copy of Charles-Louis
Philippe's BUBU OF MONTPARNESSE
for $500 "with an introduction by T. S.
Eliot." There were much cheaper copies
of BUBU offered by other dealers, but they
did not mention the Eliot introduction, so
either they did not think it was so important,
or for some reason the introduction was in
some 1951 copies of BUBU but not in
others and may possibly be considered
a point, although the bookseller offering the
$500 copy was really not very detailed in
his listing.

Anyway, if any poster can shed any light
upon who was behind the Shakespeare
House or can enlighten me regarding any
of the other questions, I would be delighted
to learn more.


Mr. Palmer
Room 314