In 1919, three friends and writers for “Vanity Fair Magazine,” began to lunch together at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood formed the core of a group that became known as The Algonquin Round Table; arguably one of the most influential forces in American literary history.
Founding of the Algonquin Round Table
In June of 1919, Parker, Benchley, Sherwood and a group of friends met in the Rose Room at the Algonquin Hotel on West Forty- forth Street in New York City, to welcome their friend and drama critic for the New York Times, Alexander Woolcott, back from his service in World War I. The party was such a smash that the group of young writers and critics decided to make it a habit and began to meet at the Algonquin daily for lunch.
Hotel manager, Frank Case, gave them their own table, a round one. The debates, conversations and exchange of ideas that took place around that table influenced writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Members of the Algonquin Round Table
The core group of the Vicious Circle included these writers, playwrights and critics who went on to become some of the most famous authors of their time. They include:
- Dorothy Parker: Famous for her cutting wit, Mrs. Parker went on to write poetry collections, countless short stories, plays and screen plays.
- George S. Kaufman: A renowned playwright, Kaufman won the Pulitzer Prize twice.
- Heywood Broun: Newspaper columnist and journalist as well as one of the founders of The American Newspaper Guild.
- Edna Ferber: Pulitzer Prize winning author. Best known for her novel Show Boat.
- Robert Benchley: Best known for his sketches in "The New Yorker", "Life" and other popular magazines. Benchley was also an Academy Award winning actor who starred in forty six movie shorts.
- Robert E. Sherwood: Playwright, won the Pulizer Prize for Idiot’s Delight and the Academy Award for the movie The Best Years of Our Lives.
The Round Table continued to meet for around ten years and in that time, members came and went, playwright Noel Coward and Harpo Marx of Marx Brothers fame among them.
As the members’ lives began to take them in different directions, the group drifted apart and after a decade, the round table that Frank Case has designated for them, went back to being just another table in what is now the Algonquin’s Round Table Room. Diners often ask to be seated there for lunch.
