Algonquin Round Table History,News Video From Talk About Vicious Circle Women

Video From Talk About Vicious Circle Women

For the centennial of the first meeting of the Algonquin Round Table, author Kevin C. Fitzpatrick presented a brief talk at the Algonquin Hotel. He presented the women of the Vicious Circle–the ones not named Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber. In this talk, learn about Jane Grant, who co-founded The New Yorker; Ruth Hale, who fought to preserve her maiden name after marriage; Neysa McMein, the popular magazine illustrator & artist; Beatrice Kaufman, the editor not ashamed of her husband’s cheating; Margaret Leech, the 2-time Pulitzer Prize winner; and the popular actresses Margalo Gillmore and Peggy Wood, both of whom were onstage for 50 years. Thank you Michele Gouveia for filming this.

For more about this subject, read the 2015 article 6 Women You Didn’t Know Were Members of the Algonquin Round Table.

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Walking Tour

Walking Tours Schedule for 2025Walking Tours Schedule for 2025

The Algonquin Round Table comes alive in the only New York walking tour devoted to the famed literary group. It met from 1919-1929 and is America’s most well-known group of writers.

Walk in the footsteps of the legendary wits Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, Robert Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott, and the rest of the “Vicious Circle.” The tour explores the architectural and historical stories of the buildings and landmarks linked to them.

The tour begins and ends inside the world-famous Algonquin Hotel, a national literary landmark. This 2-hour tour encompasses twenty blocks to explore notable locations, inside and out. Be ready!

The schedule is here.

Walking Tour

Walk in the Footsteps of the Vicious CircleWalk in the Footsteps of the Vicious Circle

The Algonquin Hotel

The Algonquin Hotel

The first public walking tours of 2018 will be in January and February. The walks are led by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, author of The Algonquin Round Table New York and A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York.

Algonquin Round Table Tour
Mondays, meet at the Algonquin Hotel 10:45, walks begin at 11:00.
29 January
5 February
12 February
26 February
Advance tickets required, click here to book.

Dorothy Parker’s Upper West Side
Wednesdays, meet at Riverside Drive and W. 72nd Street 10:45, walks begin at 11:00.
31 January
7 February
14 February
28 February
Advance tickets required, click here to book.

If the attendance is consistent more dates will be added in March and April. Keep watching the blog and Facebook page for announcements.

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun on Actors and VaudevilleHeywood Broun on Actors and Vaudeville

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun


On this day in 1938 Heywood Broun died. Here is a sample of one of his columns. From “It Seems To Me.” He loved vaudeville and the stage.

On Actors

Nothing in the world dies quite as completely as an actor and the greater the actor the more terrifying becomes the sudden transition from radiance to darkness. One day he is there with all his moods and complexities and curious glints of this and that, and the next day there is nothing left but a few wigs and costumes; perhaps a volume of memoirs, and a scrapbook of clippings in which we learn that the dead player was “majestic in presence” that “the poise of his head was stag-like” that he had “a great voice which boomed like a bell,” that he was “regal, subtle, pathetic,” and that “every one who was ever associated with him loved and respected him.”

Ask some veteran theatergoer “What was Booth like as Hamlet?” and he will say “Oh, he was wonderful.” Perhaps the face of the old theatergoer will grow animated and Booth may live again for a moment in his mind, but we who have never seen Booth will never know anything about him. Nobody can recreate and explain the art of a dead actor to the next generation. Even men who do tricks and true magic with words are not adept enough to set down any lasting portrait of an actor on the wing.