Sheldon Dick
| Sheldon Dick | |
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Sheldon Dick, photographed by Janina Lester, 1939.
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| Born | 1906 |
| Died | May 12, 1950 |
Sheldon Dick (1906–1950) was an American publisher, literary agent, photographer, and filmmaker. He was a member of a wealthy and well-connected industrialist family, and was able to support himself while funding a series of literary and artistic endeavors. He published a book by poet Edgar Lee Masters, and made a documentary about mining that has been of interest to scholars. Dick is best known for the photographs he took on behalf of the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, and for the violent circumstances of his death.
Sheldon Dick was the son of Albert Blake Dick, a wealthy manufacturer of mimeograph machines in Chicago, and Mary Henrietta Dick. He married Dorothy Michelson, the 21-year-old daughter of scientist Albert Abraham Michelson, in 1927, shortly before Dick began studies at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University. On returning to the United States, the couple lived in New York; their daughter, also named Dorothy, was born shortly thereafter.
The marriage was brief. Mrs. Dick filed for divorce in April 1932, and stated in her suit that the couple had been separated for a year. The divorce was concluded within a day, and she received custody of the child.
Dick was active as a publisher at the time, working with another minor publisher, C. Louis Rubsamen. Only one volume bore his name as an imprint: a book of poems, The Serpent in the Wilderness, by Edgar Lee Masters, published in a fine-press limited edition in 1933. It was large (8½ by 12 inches) and made with obvious attention to detail, but with some mistakes, the worst of which was the accidental binding of manuscript pages into some copies; the reception was mixed. A positive review in The New York Times describes the physical book as "an attractive piece of work." The book sold slowly, despite a brief spike caused by the Times review, and made no profit, and a trade edition, which Dick and Masters had discussed, never materialized, partly because Dick had indicated in promotional material that there would not be one. Masters biographer Herbert K. Russell blames the book's failure in part on Dick's "poor judgment."
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