Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Children’s Book Publishing, 1919–1939

6. Building Professional Culture

T he prosperity george brett predicted in 1920 was reflected in book sales, boosted overall by 6 percent throughout the decade. Organizations like the ALA enjoyed taking credit for the new burst of publishing activity for children, but a carefully cultivated foundation of interprofessional relationships fostered by bookwomen was an important component of these gains. During the second half of the 1920s, they continued expanding the institutional apparatus of children’s book publishing by consolidating their claims to authority, enlarging the scope of their undertakings, and developing consistent and predictable patterns in their working relationships. Although viewing themselves as liaisons between books and readers, bookwomen also became bridges of a different sort, each in her way connecting bookwomen to the past, to those outside their ranks, and to each other. This was especially evident when they mentored new authors and editors, although, in the process, they cultivated discernible levels of privilege among children’s book professionals. Nearly twenty years older than other bookwomen, Anne Carroll Moore and Alice Jordan were generational bridges. While the two women remained associated with the noncommercial library enterprise, they were astutely, if ambivalently, aware that an expanded market was crucial to enhanced quality for children’s books. Jordan’s persistence in using the NERTCL as a forum to warm Boston’s librarians to the concept of the commercial aspects of children’s books demonstrated her awareness of this fact. Perceiving themselves as modern and progressive, Moore and Jordan cultivated friendships with bookwomen whose livings derived from the commercial book trade. Moreover, they supported the younger generation as they esteemed 118 c h a p t e r 6 Building Professional Culture the older. But despite their resistance to being overly identified with the past and their commitment to mentoring young professional women, their sense of the ideal book nonetheless remained firmly anchored in nineteenthcentury British and American children’s books. Their attachment to such books reinforced hierarchical thought patterns and compounded the obstacles that new authors faced in making their own mark on children’s literature by requiring them to reckon with literary figures and books of the past as standards by which their own work was judged. Moore’s own writing, she believed, lived up to that standard. In 1924, with nearly thirty years of professional life behind her, she seemed at the pinnacle of her accomplishments. In the fall of that year, Putnam distributed Nicholas to a warm and enthusiastic reception from Moore’s friends.1 Letters of congratulation poured in from colleagues like Della McGregor, chief of the juvenile division at the St. Paul Library in Minnesota, who started a Nicholas diary and invited Moore to visit to receive the keys to the city.2 Throughout her life, Moore remained particularly proud of Nicholas, recalling its success with great fondness and carrying copies wherever she went.3 Her Bookman reviews continued to be widely read as well, and her work in general, one colleague noted, had prompted an interest in children ’s publishing that “surfaced like a great wave,” carrying with it the “authors and artists of enormous gifts”who“rode high on the swing of it.”4 She continued to be among the core of experts who selected the recipient of the Newbery Medal and, as the acknowledged director of Children’s Book Week, her expertise was advertised in the popular as well as professional press. Such magazines as Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal routinely printed articles about Book Week and employed children’s illustrators such as Jessie Wilcox Smith to design covers.5 In contrast to the relatively meager and largely local participation characteristic of its early years, Book Week was now a national week-long festival of opportunity for bookwomen to celebrate themselves as much as books. No sooner was one Book Week over, it seemed, than preparations for the next were underway. Women’s clubs, civic organizations, and schools promoted bookwomen by their involvement with Book Week; bookshops around the country sponsored plays about the event, performed by youth groups such as the Camp Fire Girls.6 Requests multiplied for stickers, posters, and assistance with Book Week plans to which Moore happily responded with advice, speakers , and shipments of exhibits. Financial opportunities for booksellers also attended the event’s success; patrons who attended such special exhibits and plays, frequently sponsored building professional culture 119 by department stores such as Lord & Taylor and...