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Oscar Wilde Bookshop

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Oscar Wilde Bookshop

The Oscar Wilde Bookshop was a bookstore located in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood that focused on LGBTQ works. It was founded by Craig Rodwell on November 24, 1967, as the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop. Initially located at 291 Mercer Street, it moved in 1973 to 15 Christopher Street, opposite Gay Street.

The bookstore closed on March 29, 2009, citing the Great Recession and challenges from online bookstores.

In 2006, the bookshop received the Michele Karlsberg Leadership Award from the Publishing Triangle.

As a member and vice president of the Mattachine Society, Rodwell sought to make Mattachine more visible to gays and society at large by opening a storefront to cater to the growing local gay community in Greenwich Village, saying:

I was trying to get the (Mattachine) Society to be out dealing with the people instead of sitting in an office. We even looked at a few storefronts. I wanted the Society to set up a combination bookstore, counseling services, fund-raising headquarters, and office. The main thing was to be out on the street.

Rodwell did not consider himself to be a bookseller businessman but, rather, a person who at the age of 13 set out to help change the world's view of gay people and of gay people's own self-image.

The bookstore opened on November 24, 1967. Craig and his mother set up the store the night before the opening. Despite a limited selection of materials when the bookstore was first established, Rodwell refused to stock pornography and instead favored literature by gay and lesbian authors. On how he chose the shop's name, Rodwell said:

I wanted a name that would tell people what the shop was about. So I tried to think of the most prominent person whose name I could use who is most readily identifiable as a Homosexual by most people, someone who's sort of a pseudo-martyr. And Oscar Wilde was the most obvious at the time, so I called it the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop.

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