Algonquin Round Table No Sirree! What was No Sirree? it was perhaps inevitable that they would write and stage their own revue. No Sirree!, staged for one night only in April 1922, Who was in it? Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman, Connelly, Adams and Benchley with violinist Jascha Heifetz What songs were in the play? "He Who Gets Flapped", a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert Sherwood Any other songs? "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; Was it successful? With the success of No Sirree! the Round Tablers hoped What did they hope for? Kaufman and Connelly funded the revue, named The Forty-niners. The revue opened in November 1922 and was a failure, running for just 15 performances. What other parts did the Round Table play in No Sirree? The only item of note to emerge from No Sirree! was Robert Benchley's contribution, The Treasurer's Report. Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance What happened with The Treasurer's Report? Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance that Irving Berlin hired Benchley in 1923 to deliver the Report as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue for $500 a week. Was it successful as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue? Report was later made into a short sound film in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system by Fox Film Corporation.
What else happened in the play?
What else happened in The Treasurer's Report besides being part of the Music Box Revue?
Given the literary and theatrical activities of the Round Table members, it was perhaps inevitable that they would write and stage their own revue. No Sirree!, staged for one night only in April 1922, was a take-off of a then-popular European touring revue called La Chauve-Souris, directed by Nikita Balieff.  No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio of Neysa McMein, which served as something of a salon for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman, Connelly, Adams and Benchley with violinist Jascha Heifetz providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped", a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" including Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, Ruth Gillmore, Lenore Ulric and Mary Brandon; "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By--An A. A. Milne Play."  The only item of note to emerge from No Sirree! was Robert Benchley's contribution, The Treasurer's Report. Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance that Irving Berlin hired Benchley in 1923 to deliver the Report as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue for $500 a week. In 1928, Report was later made into a short sound film in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system by Fox Film Corporation. The film marked the beginning of a second career for Benchley in Hollywood.  With the success of No Sirree! the Round Tablers hoped to duplicate it with an "official" Vicious Circle production open to the public with material performed by professional actors. Kaufman and Connelly funded the revue, named The Forty-niners. The revue opened in November 1922 and was a failure, running for just 15 performances. CANNOTANSWER
or the Curse of an Akins Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By--An A. A. Milne Play."
The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay, and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.

Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley.

In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations, both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.

Origin
The group that would become the Round Table began meeting in June 1919 as the result of a practical joke carried out by theatrical press agent John Peter Toohey. Toohey, annoyed at The New York Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott for refusing to plug one of Toohey's clients (Eugene O'Neill) in his column, organized a luncheon supposedly to welcome Woollcott back from World War I, where he had been a correspondent for Stars and Stripes. Instead, Toohey used the occasion to poke fun at Woollcott on a number of fronts. Woollcott's enjoyment of the joke and the success of the event prompted Toohey to suggest that the group in attendance meet at the Algonquin each day for lunch.

The group first gathered in the Algonquin's Pergola Room (later called the Oak Room) at a long rectangular table. As they increased in number, Algonquin manager Frank Case moved them to the Rose Room and a round table. Initially the group called itself "The Board" and the luncheons "Board meetings". After being assigned a waiter named Luigi, the group re-christened itself "Luigi Board". Finally, they became "The Vicious Circle" although "The Round Table" gained wide currency after a caricature by cartoonist Edmund Duffy of the Brooklyn Eagle portrayed the group sitting at a round table and wearing armor.

Membership

Charter members of the Round Table included:

 Franklin Pierce Adams, columnist
 Robert Benchley, humorist and actor
 Heywood Broun, columnist and sportswriter (married to Ruth Hale)
 Marc Connelly, playwright
 Ruth Hale, freelance writer who worked for women's rights
 George S. Kaufman, playwright and director
 Dorothy Parker, critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter
 Brock Pemberton, Broadway producer
 Murdock Pemberton, Broadway publicist, writer
 Harold Ross, The New Yorker editor
 Robert E. Sherwood, author and playwright
 John Peter Toohey, Broadway publicist

 Alexander Woollcott, critic and journalist

Membership was not official or fixed for so many others who moved in and out of the Circle. Some of these included:

 Tallulah Bankhead, actress
 Norman Bel Geddes, stage and industrial designer
 Noël Coward, playwright
 Blyth Daly, actress
 Edna Ferber, author and playwright
 Eva Le Gallienne, actress
 Margalo Gillmore, actress
 Jane Grant, journalist and feminist (married to Harold Ross)
 Beatrice Kaufman, editor and playwright (married to George S. Kaufman)
 Margaret Leech, writer and historian
 Herman J. Mankiewicz, screenwriter 
 Harpo Marx, comedian and film star
 Neysa McMein, magazine illustrator
 Alice Duer Miller, writer
 Donald Ogden Stewart, playwright and screenwriter
 Frank Sullivan, journalist and humorist
 Deems Taylor, composer
 Estelle Winwood, actress and comedian
 Peggy Wood, actress

Activities
In addition to the daily luncheons, members of the Round Table worked and associated with each other almost constantly. The group was devoted to games, including cribbage and poker. The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which met at the hotel on Saturday nights. Regulars at the game included Kaufman, Adams, Broun, Ross and Woollcott, with non-Round Tablers Herbert Bayard Swope, silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, actor Harpo Marx, and writer Ring Lardner sometimes sitting in. The group also played charades (which they called simply "The Game") and the "I can give you a sentence" game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."

Members often visited Neshobe Island, a private island co-owned by several "Algonks"—but governed by Woollcott as a "benevolent tyrant", as his biographer Samuel Hopkins Adams charitably put it—located on several acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont. There they would engage in their usual array of games including Wink murder, which they called simply "Murder", plus croquet.

A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. As time went on the jokes became ever more elaborate. Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out and then later comment to Woollcott "What on earth is wrong with your portrait?" until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait.

No Sirree!
Given the literary and theatrical activities of the Round Table members, it was perhaps inevitable that they would write and stage their own revue. No Sirree!, staged for one night only in April 1922, was a take-off of a then-popular European touring revue called La Chauve-Souris, directed by Nikita Balieff.

No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio of Neysa McMein, which served as something of a salon for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman, Connelly, Adams and Benchley with violinist Jascha Heifetz providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped", a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" including Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, Ruth Gillmore, Lenore Ulric and Mary Brandon; "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By—An A. A. Milne Play."

The only item of note to emerge from No Sirree! was Robert Benchley's contribution, The Treasurer's Report. Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance that Irving Berlin hired Benchley in 1923 to deliver the Report as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue for $500 a week. In 1928, Report was later made into a short sound film in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system by Fox Film Corporation. The film marked the beginning of a second career for Benchley in Hollywood.

With the success of No Sirree! the Round Tablers hoped to duplicate it with an "official" Vicious Circle production open to the public with material performed by professional actors. Kaufman and Connelly funded the revue, named The Forty-niners. The revue opened in November 1922 and was a failure, running for just 15 performances.

Decline
As members of the Round Table moved into ventures outside New York City, inevitably the group drifted apart. By the early 1930s the Vicious Circle was broken. Edna Ferber said she realized it when she arrived at the Rose Room for lunch one day in 1932 and found the group's table occupied by a family from Kansas. Frank Case was asked what happened to the group. He shrugged and replied, "What became of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street? These things do not last forever." Some members of the group remained friends after its dissolution. Parker and Benchley in particular remained close up until his death in 1945, although her political leanings did strain their relationship. Others, as the group itself would come to understand when it gathered following Woollcott's death in 1943, simply realized that they had nothing to say to one another.

Public response and legacy
Because a number of the members of the Round Table had regular newspaper columns, the activities and quips of various Round Table members were reported in the national press. This brought Round Tablers widely into the public consciousness as renowned wits.

Not all of their contemporaries were fans of the group. Their critics accused them of logrolling, or exchanging favorable plugs of one another's works, and of rehearsing their witticisms in advance. James Thurber (who lived in the hotel) was a detractor of the group, accusing them of being too consumed by their elaborate practical jokes. H. L. Mencken, who was much admired by many in the Circle, was also a critic, commenting to fellow writer Anita Loos that "their ideals were those of a vaudeville actor, one who is extremely 'in the know' and inordinately trashy".

The group showed up in the 1923 best-seller Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton. She sarcastically described a group she called "the Sophisticates":

Groucho Marx, brother of Round Table associate Harpo, was never comfortable amidst the viciousness of the Vicious Circle. Therein he remarked "The price of admission is a serpent's tongue and a half-concealed stiletto." Even some members of the Round Table disparaged it later in life. Dorothy Parker in particular criticized the group.

Despite Parker's bleak assessment and while it is true that some members of the Round Table are perhaps now "famous for being famous" instead of for their literary output, Round Table members and associates contributed to the literary landscape, including Pulitzer Prize-winning work by Circle members Kaufman, Connelly and Sherwood (who won four) and by associate Ferber and the legacy of Ross's New Yorker. Others made lasting contributions to the realms of stage and screen — Tallulah Bankhead and Eva Le Gallienne became Broadway greats and the films of Harpo and Benchley remain popular; and Parker has remained renowned for her short stories and literary reviews.

The Algonquin Round Table, as well as the number of other literary and theatrical greats who lodged there, helped earn the Algonquin Hotel its status as a New York City Historic Landmark. The hotel was so designated in 1987. In 1996 the hotel was designated a national literary landmark by the Friends of Libraries USA based on the contributions of "The Round Table Wits". The organization's bronze plaque is attached to the front of the hotel.
Although the Rose Room was removed from the Algonquin in a 1998 remodel, the hotel paid tribute to the group by commissioning and hanging the painting A Vicious Circle by Natalie Ascencios, depicting the Round Table and also created a replica of the original table. The hotel occasionally stages an original musical production, The Talk of the Town, in the Oak Room. Its latest production started September 11, 2007 and ran through the end of the year.

A film about the members, The Ten-Year Lunch (1987), won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The dramatic film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) recounts the Round Table from the perspective of Dorothy Parker.

In popular culture
Portions of the 1981 film Rich and Famous were set in the Algonquin and one of the film's characters, Liz Hamilton (played by Jacqueline Bisset), refers to the Round Table during the film.

The Algonquin Round Table was featured in "The Young Indiana Jones and the Scandal of 1920", a 1993 episode of the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, in which the title character meets the group and attends at least two lunches. Wonderful Nonsense - The Algonquin Round Table is a documentary produced for the DVD release of that film in 2008.

In season 2, episode 4 of Seinfeld entitled “The Phone Message” (1991), Jerry tells Donna, the woman he is seeing at the time: "Boy, I bet you got a regular Algonquin round table there", after Donna says she discussed a Dockers commercial with friends.

The 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle concerns Dorothy Parker and her relationship with Robert Benchley and the larger group.

In 2009, Robert Benchley's grandson, Nat Benchley, and co-editor Kevin C. Fitzpatrick published The Lost Algonquin Round Table, a collection of the early writings of the group. Benchley's grandson Peter Benchley wrote the famous shark novel Jaws upon which the Steven Spielberg film is based.

See also

References

External links 
 Algonquin Round Table historical site History notes and news since 1999
 Algonquin Round Table at PBS's American Masters
 

American literary movements
American humorists
Culture of Manhattan
Literary circles
20th-century American literature
Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.

The book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.

Tales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.

Purpose and structure

A didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem ("Some man has made me a proposition..." or "I fear that such and such person intends to...") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are "examples" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.

Each chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: "And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses." A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.

Origin of stories and influence on later literature
Many of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.

Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, "What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman".

Tale 32, "What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.

Story 7, "What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.

Tale 2, "What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market," is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.

In 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name "The Count Lucanor". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.

The stories

The book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.

 What Happened to a King and His Favorite 
 What Happened to a Good Man and His Son 
 How  King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors
 What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die 
 What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak
 How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown 
 What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana 
 What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed 
 What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion 
 What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils 
 What Happened to a Dean of  Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo
 What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster 
 What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges 
 The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer 
 What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville 
 The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes 
 What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner 
 What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg 
 What Happened to the Crows and the Owls 
 What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy 
 What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him 
 What Happened to the Lion and the Bull 
 How the Ants Provide for Themselves 
 What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons 
 What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin
 What Happened to the Tree of Lies 
 What Happened to an Emperor and to  Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives 
 What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain 
 What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead 
 What Happened to King Abenabet of  Seville and Ramayquía His Wife 
 How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor 
 What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth 
 What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron 
 What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another 
 What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman
 What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together 
 What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas 
 What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River 
 What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow 
 Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul 
 What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem 
 What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety 
 What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman 
 What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous 
 What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal 
 What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived 
 What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid 
 What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends 
 What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled 
 What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal 
 What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty

References

Notes

Bibliography

 Sturm, Harlan

 Wacks, David

External links

The Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.
JSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.
Selections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)

14th-century books
Spanish literature
1335 books An Englishman in Auschwitz is a 2001 book written by Leon Greenman, a Holocaust survivor. The book details his experiences in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The book is a result of the commitment of English-born Greenman to God "that if he lived, he would let the world know what happened during the war". In short, the book describes the  reminiscences of his days of imprisonment in six concentration camps of the Nazis. Greenman describes the arrival of his family (consisting of himself, his wife, Esther, a Dutchwoman, and their three-year-old son, Barney) at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in these words: The women were separated from the men: Else and Barny were marched about 20 yards away to a queue of women...I tried to watch Else. I could see her clearly against the blue lights. She could see me too for she threw me a kiss and held up our child for me to see. What was going through her mind I will never know. Perhaps she was pleased that the journey had come to an end.

References

2001 non-fiction books
Personal accounts of the Holocaust