Four Seas Company

The Four Seas Company was a bookstore and small-press publisher in Boston, Massachusetts.^[1] It is remembered today mostly for its publication of the early work of major modernist writers such as William Faulkner,^[2] William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein,^[3] and Yone Noguchi. Four Seas was founded by the young Edmund R. Brown upon his graduation from Harvard College in 1910,^[4] and its imprint first appears in 1911. The last book published under the imprint was in 1930, the year the company was absorbed by Bruce Humphries, Inc.^[4][5]

Notable publications

• Stephen Vincent Benét's first book, Five Men and Pompey (1915)
• William Carlos Williams, Al Que Quiere! (1917)

• John Gould Fletcher, Japanese Prints (1918)

• Yone Noguchi, Japanese Hokkus (1920)

• Olga Petrova, The White Peacock (1920)

• Gertrude Stein, Geography and Plays, (1922)

• William Faulkner's first book, The Marble Faun (1924)^[6]

• Harry Crosby, Chariot of the Sun (1929)

• The first two editions of Brazilian literature translated into English: Graca Aranha, Canaan (1920), and Isaac Goldberg, ed, Brazilian Tales (1921)^[7]

• The periodical Poetry Journal

Further reading

• Publishing William Carlos Williams: selected correspondence, a collection of William Carlos Williams' correspondence with the Four Seas Company
• Gertrude Stein's correspondence at the Archives at Yale