Frances Steloff, founder of the Gotham Book Mart in New York City and friend and benefactor to some of the great twentieth-century writers, supported literature and authors both spiritually and physically by purchasing, selling, and defending their works despite legal and financial problems. She was instrumental in founding the James Joyce Society, which continues to meet at the Gotham Book Mart. Even at the age of 101 she was an indefatigable worker, coming down to the store each day to help. Steloff made the Gotham Book Mart one of the most influential bookshops in the United States, but the Gotham Book Mart is more than a mere purveyor of books: it is a force that helped shape modern literature.

Ida Frances Steloff was born on 31 December 1887 in Saratoga Springs, New York, a city that in summer bustled with the wealthy who came for the horse racing but which became...