The American Book Collector noted that he “came from a large, old-world, orthodox Lithuanian family that emigrated to this country when he was but a few years old … the teeming, crowded westside of Chicago at the turn of the century from a childhood of desperation and need, through a youth of formal education that ended when he was 11.” He was an avid reader, however, learning bookselling at Economy Books and McClurg’s Bookstore, and opening his own Argus Book Shop in 1923, selling new and used books in what Vincent Starrett called “a sort of tavern for his friends.” He and The Argus attracted booklovers and writers such as Starrett, Somerset Maugham, Christopher Morley, John Steinbeck, and Ben Hecht, to name some of the better known. Ben Abramson was born Augin Kadenei, Lithuania.
