Fireside Meeting - Paul Elder: Publisher, Bookseller, Berkeleyan

For seventy years — from 1898 until 1968 — Paul Elder was the leading bookseller in San Francisco. And, for the first twenty of those years, Elder was also the major publisher in the city, issuing over 400 titles. His books were praised as works of art and are still collected today as art objects. In addition, Elder created a new kind of bookstore with a well-earned reputation for carefully-crafted artistic ambience, where his “books beautiful” were displayed on equal footing with pottery, metalwork, paintings, prints, and jewelry. The store was profitable when many other bookstores were failing, and his novel sales approach gained both national attention and imitators.

Elder also had connections to the Berkeley Hillside Club. Indeed, Elder lived in Berkeley for most of his adult life, quietly commuting to San Francisco on the ferry. Elder published several works by the Club’s two best-known members, Charles Keeler and…