Algonquin Round Table News The Years With Ross by Thurber Gets A Reboot

The Years With Ross by Thurber Gets A Reboot

The Years With Ross

The Years With Ross

The Years With Ross

James Thurber was not a founding member of The New Yorker, he joined about one year after the first issue rolled off the presses in February 1925. He was hired by cofounder Harold Ross because Thurber had newspaper experience, which counted more than a college degree to the ink-stained Ross. The two worked closely for the next several years and it was at the magazine that Thurber hit his stride as a writer. It was also while working for the magazine that he started publishing his cartoons, which made him equally famous.

The Years With Ross was the book of memoirs that Thurber wrote in the years after Ross died in December 1951. It is based on his memories (which a few insiders didn’t agree with). The book was a hit and continues to sell on the backlist of the successor to his original publisher. It also seems like every dozen years or so, sometimes more, a new edition comes out. If you tried to collect every edition and cover of The Years With Ross from 1959 to today, it would take up a small bookshelf. In 2001 Harper Perennial reissued the book with a new foreword by Adam Gopnik, the longtime writer for The New Yorker, who seems to get all the writing gigs when it concerns the magazine.

A new edition was brought out during the pandemic, in December 2020. It has a more colorful cover, using a stock news photo of Ross on the jacket. The photo is from the time Ross was in the public eye, testifying against public address announcements in Grand Central Terminal. It includes one of Thurber’s dogs.

The paperback still has 336 pages. It has stories about Charles Addams, Peter Arno, Robert Benchley, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, and Alexander Woollcott. One thing it lacks is anything of value about Ross’ first wife, Jane Grant, who helped launch the magazine. She gets written out of any and all histories of The New Yorker, starting with this one. The book is a light read. It might also be useful if you plan to watch the upcoming Wes Anderson movie, The French Dispatch, which looks a lot like The New Yorker of the Harold Ross era.

Finally, a note to the HarperCollins art director. A cover blurb from the New York Herald Tribune is funny to see, since it has been defunct since 1966.

You can order the book here from Amazon, and the nine cents from Amazon will go to pay the hosting costs of this very website. More books about Round Table members are listed here.

Related Post

Frank Sullivan Place

Frank Sullivan of Saratoga SpringsFrank Sullivan of Saratoga Springs

Frank Sullivan Home, Saratoga Springs

Frank Sullivan Home, Saratoga Springs


After the demise of the New York World in 1931, Algonquin Round Table member Frank Sullivan moved home to Saratoga Springs and became the ultimate freelancer. In a small clapboard house shared with his sister at 135 Lincoln Avenue, he turned out marvelous humor pieces for the rest of his career. “Once I visited New York for twenty years but I wouldn’t live there if you gave me Philadelphia,” he wrote. “A small town is the place to live. I live in a small town 180 miles from New York and while I would not say it has New York beat by a mile I would put the distance at six furlongs.”

Over the years, New Yorkers such as Harold Ross and Marc Connelly visited Sullivan, who took them to the racetrack, two blocks from his house, which treated him like royalty. He picked up the nickname “The Sage of Saratoga” and worked until his early eighties. He wrote for The New Yorker for fifty years as well as the Times sports section, the Saturday Evening Post, and Town & Country, his work collected in half a dozen books.

Sullivan suffered a series of falls in his home, and his health deteriorated. He died in Saratoga Hospital on February 19, 1976, at age 83. He is buried in the family plot St. Peter’s Cemetery in Saratoga Springs.

Frank Sullivan Place

Frank Sullivan Place

Today he is immortalized with a street sign nearby the racetrack, Frank Sullivan Place. His house was named a literary landmark, and is privately owned.

Adapted from The Algonquin Round Table New York, A Historical Guide (Globe Pequot Press) available here.

Walk in the Footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table in New Guide Book to Jazz Age Writers & WitsWalk in the Footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table in New Guide Book to Jazz Age Writers & Wits

Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press)

Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press)

New York—Retrace the steps of the legendary wits that convened at the Algonquin Hotel in 1919 who called themselves the Vicious Circle. THE ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE NEW YORK: A HISTORICAL GUIDE is the first book to fully explore the whole group and their world. It’s packed with photos and maps.

“That is the thing about New York,” wrote Dorothy Parker in 1928. “It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day.”

Now you can journey back there, in time, to a grand city teeming with hidden speakeasies, luxurious Broadway playhouses, and dazzling skyscrapers. In these places, Parker and her cohorts in the Vicious Circle sharpened their wit, polished their writing, and captured the energy and elegance of the time. Robert Benchley, Parker’s best friend, became the first managing editor of Vanity Fair before Irving Berlin spotted him onstage in a Vicious Circle revue and helped launch his acting career. Edna Ferber, creator of bestselling melodramas, wrote the Pulitzer-winning So Big as well as Show Boat and Giant. Jane Grant pressed her first husband, Harold Ross, into starting The New Yorker. Herman Mankiewicz was a Times wage slave who soaked up the atmosphere, later pouring it into his screenplay for Citizen Kane. Parker wrote for Vanity Fair and Vogue before ascending the throne as queen of the Round Table, earning everlasting fame (but rather less fortune) for her award-winning short stories and unforgettable poems. These are a few of the thirty figures from backstage Broadway to newspaper city rooms in the book.

Explore their favorite salons and saloons, their homes and offices (most still standing), while learning about their colorful careers and private lives. Packed with archival photos, drawings, and other images—including never-before-published material—this illustrated historical guide includes current information on all locations. Use it to retrace the footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table, and you’ll discover that the golden age of Gotham still surrounds us.

About the Author
Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (author), president of the Dorothy Parker Society, is the author of Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide (Lyons Press). He has been leading walking tours from the Algonquin Hotel for 15 years. Visit him at fitzpatrickauthor.com.

Anthony Melchiorri (foreword) is the creator and host of Hotel Impossible on the Travel Channel. A former general manager of the Algonquin Hotel, he has twenty years experience at the top hotels in the industry.

To Pre-Order: The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide, by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, (Lyons Press January 2014; ISBN: 978-1-4930-0757-8)