Bag Sz: 15″H x 18″W

153 East 70th Street NYC

The jewel-box gallery and bookshop run by Jane Stubbs like a modern-day version of Bloomsbury is probably the closest thing New York has to that early-20th-century insular world of artists, writers and thinkers.

Certainly the love of estheticism is there at Stubbs Books and Prints. As is the quality that Sir Osbert Sitwell called an enormous tolerance for the untoward or eccentric. Blame it on her Mississippi-bred Southern hospitality, but Ms. Stubbs just can’t seem to get the insular part exactly right.

For instance, she once invited 400 guests to the two-room gallery on 70th Street off Lexington Avenue for the birthday of her friend Christopher Mason, the musical satirist. “She said: ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be so nice — they’ll get the invitation but they won’t all come,’ ‘ Mr. Mason recalled, pausing dramatically. “And they did.” C. Z. Guest, Nicole Miller, Mario Buatta and Dominick Dunne and about 396 others. “The amazing thing is, she didn’t bat an eyelid,” Mr. Mason added. “She just said, ‘Oh, my.’ “