Joseph Mitchell | Author

About the Author

Joseph Mitchell came to New York City in 1929 from a small town in North Carolina. He was twenty-one years old. He worked as a reporter & feature writer--for "The World", "The Herald Tribune", & "The World Telegram"--for eight years, & then went to "The New Yorker", where he remained until his show more death in 1996. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Works by Joseph Mitchell

Popular Recent

Up in the Old Hotel (1943) 1,431 copies

Joe Gould's Secret (1965) 405 copies

McSorley's Wonderful Saloon (1943) 187 copies

My Ears Are Bent (2001) 175 copies

The Bottom of the Harbor (1959) 161 copies

Apologies to the Iroquois (1959) 131 copies

Old Mr. Flood (1948) 66 copies

Goodbye, Shirley Temple 2 copies

Lady Olga 1 copy

Work Explorer

Associated Works

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink (2007) — Contributor — 536 copies

Fifty Great American Short Stories (1965) — Contributor — 438 copies

Life Stories: Profiles from the New Yorker (2000) — Contributor — 299 copies

Writing New York: A Literary Anthology (1998) — Contributor — 281 copies

The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (1997) — Contributor — 214 copies

Russell Baker's Book of American Humor (1993) — Contributor — 208 copies

Writing New York: A Literary Anthology (Expanded 10th-Anniversary Edition) (2008) — Contributor — 93 copies

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Common Knowledge

Canonical name: Mitchell, Joseph
Legal name: Mitchell, Joseph Quincy
Birthdate: 1908-07-27
Date of death: 1996-05-24
Burial location: Floyd Memorial Cemetery, Fairmont, North Carolina, USA
Gender: male
Nationality: USA
Birthplace: Iona, North Carolina, USA
Place of death: New York, New York, USA
Cause of death: lung cancer
Places of residence: New York, New York, USA
Iona, North Carolina, USA (birthplace)
Education: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Occupations: reporter
writer
Relationships: Mitchell, Therese (spouse)
Sanborn, Nora Mitchell (daughter)
Organizations: The New Yorker
Gypsy Lore Society
Friends of Cast-Iron Architecture
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
Awards and honors: American Academy of Arts and Letters (Grant, 1965)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature, 1970)
North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame (1997)
North Carolina Award for Literature (1984)

Members

Reviews

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

I read this several years ago and don't remember many (or any) details except the fact that I liked the book a great deal. I think I will reread it one of these days to remind myself why.

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dvoratreis | 22 other reviews | May 22, 2024 |

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

Stories from a fascinating (and brutal) time and place - depression era New York City and the fishmongers, drunks, and preachers who populated tenements, taverns and harbors. I learned so much about what's at the bottom of the harbor and fish! Joseph Mitchell was a writer for The New Yorker at the time and these are his stories. Poor, poor Joe Gould....

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RachelGMB | 22 other reviews | Dec 27, 2023 |

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

From the father of literary nonfiction, an idiosyncratic history of New York City.

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Mark_Feltskog | 22 other reviews | Dec 23, 2023 |

Up in the old hotel, and other stories by Joseph Mitchell

Well let me change from day today this book currently is in my top 10 favorite books. Mitchell was a long time reporter for various New York newspapers in later than New York or during the first half of the 1900s. His pieces are wonderful slices of New York history told through various character sketches and regions of New York that has long since disappeared. Each story is a gym starting with McSorley‘s old Ale House and moving onto other colorful characters such as Maisie who ran a movie theater on the lower Eastside waterman fisherman oysterman who worked the docs around New York Harbor and the Fulton fishmarket. He captures since of long last New York through a character Joe Gould described as a true Greenwich Village bohemian. Highly recommend.… (more)

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