author
Frank Shay
1888–1954
A lively figure in Greenwich Village’s literary world, this bookseller, editor, and publisher helped shape the little-theater and bohemian scenes of the 1910s and 1920s. His work ranged from play anthologies and folklore to sea songs and literary bibliography, giving his books an unusually wide and curious spirit.
1 Audiobook
The Bibliography of Walt Whitman
by Frank Shay
About the author
Born Frank Xavier Shea in East Orange, New Jersey, he later changed the spelling of his surname to Shay. He became a well-known presence in New York’s book world, working as a bookseller and publisher and eventually opening Frank Shay’s Bookshop at 4 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, a shop remembered as both a bookstore and a meeting place for writers, artists, and other Village regulars.
Shay was more than a shop owner: he edited and compiled books on theater, folklore, songs, and literature. His works include The Bibliography of Walt Whitman, The Plays and Books of the Little Theatre, A Guide to Longer Plays, and An American Sailor’s Treasury. That mix says a lot about him—he was drawn to practical theater culture, American storytelling, and the kind of odd, memorable material that keeps resurfacing in readers’ hands.
He died in 1954, but his name still turns up wherever people study early 20th-century Greenwich Village and small-press publishing. The surviving traces of his bookshop, especially the famous signed door from the shop, suggest the kind of host he was: someone who made space for literary life to happen around him.