Originally published in 1907, Twenty Years in a Newspaper Office documents Fred W. Allsopp’s lengthy experience working in the offices of the Arkansas Gazette.

Affectionately dubbed the ‘Old Lady’, Allsopp tells how the Arkansas Gazette experienced fluctuations in size, character, prestige, and volume of business over its eighty-seven years in print, and indeed in the twenty years Allsopp worked there.

Toward the end of his time there, the Gazette reached such a lucrative pinnacle as to afford to print a colour comic section – the marker of highest journalistic success at the time.

Unlike standard, chronological memoirs, Allsopp writes with humour, wit, and with a great sense of fun to create ‘a sort of melange or hodgepodge of things seen, heard, experienced, or imagined’, often pulling together what he calls ‘random sketches of things’ at the Arkansas Gazette. These vivid sketches are interspersed throughout the memoir with articulate and clever poems penned by the author (as well as some published in the paper by its own readers).

Twenty Years in a Newspaper Office is a wonderful insight into journalistic life at the turn of the twentieth century, and makes for a truly vivacious and heart-warming read.

Frederick William Allsopp (1867 – 1946) was an author, newspaperman, book collector, and bookstore owner. Born in Wolverhampton, he moved with his family to Nevada County at the age of 12. After selling newspapers during his youth, he applied for a job at the Arkansas Gazette age just 17, and became the business manager by 1899.