Frances Steloff

Ida Frances Stelov (December 31, 1887 – April 15, 1989), better known as Fanny Steloff, was the founder of the Gotham Book Mart in New York City, a center for avant-garde literature and literati from 1920 until it closed in 2007.

[1] Ida Frances Stelov was born to a poor family in Saratoga Springs, New York on December 31, 1887.

At the age of 19, she moved to New York where she worked at Loeser's, a department store.

[2] She challenged government censorship, ordering smuggled copies of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer in the 1930s and purchasing shipments of D. H. Lawrence's banned book Lady Chatterley's Lover in the late 1920s.

[3] According to its writer Robbie Robertson, the line "Take a load off, Fanny" in his well known song "The Weight" was inspired by Steloff, whose bookstore he visited.