The Bookshop as Arsenal of Democracy: Marion Dodd and the Hampshire Bookshop during World War II

The connection of print culture with the principle of democracy is most often examined through the familiar abstraction of "freedom of the press." But books and booksellers, at various times in history, have been called into patriotic service in deliberate and tangible (and some times unexpected) ways. "The bookshop is an arsenal of democracy," claimed Marion Dodd, one of the first female officers of the American Booksellers Association, in 1943. As a woman and a bookseller, Marion Dodd was restricted to non-combat roles and confined to the home front. But she was nonetheless determined to find ways to participate.