Gordon, Dorothy, 1895-

American author and poet.

Dorothy Webster Gordon was born of American parents in Berlin in 1895. She studied in the United States and married John Gordon, a professor, with whom she spent two years in France and fourteen in England, eventually moving to New Haven, Connecticut. An avid book collector, poet (under her maiden name, Dorothy Webster), and children's author, she was unable to locate books that interested her in the New Haven bookshops and began corresponding with Manhattan book dealer Mitchell Kennerley.

Mitchell Kennerley was born in 1878 in Burslem, England. He arrived in the United States in 1896 and quickly worked his way into publishing, becoming at age twenty-three the publisher of the successful journal The Reader. In 1906 launched his own imprint under which he published literary criticism, modern drama, fiction, and poetry. He was called by Christopher Morley “unquestionably the first Modern publisher in this country.” His publishing house can be viewed as a prologue to the movement toward personal publishing that flourished in the United States in the 1920s; he produced elegant books in small print runs, emphasizing unusual and innovative authors of poetry, fiction, and criticism. American Bookman said of Kennerley, “his imprint is in itself guarantee of a book's worth.”

Kennerley's publishing career was substantially complete before 1920; he took over operation of the Anderson Galleries in 1916 and thereafter committed himself to auctions and rare books. He opened the Lexington Avenue Book Shop in 1940 and operated the bookshop until his suicide in 1950.