Virtual Exhibition Tour and Curator Q&A: “Imaginary Books”

Curator Reid Byers gives a pre-recorded video walkthrough tour of his Grolier Club member’s exhibition: Imaginary Books: Lost, Unwritten, and Fictive Books Found Only in Other Books followed by a live online Q&A. The show runs in the Grolier Club’s second-floor Gallery through February 15, 2025.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-exhibition-tour-and-curator-qa-imaginary-books-tickets-1027819314237?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

Part bibliophilic entertainment and part conceptual art installation, Imaginary Books: Lost, Unwritten, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books features a collection of books that do not really exist. Curated by Grolier Club member Reid Byers, the exhibition includes approximately 100 books and associated arealia from his collection—all simulacra created with a team of printers, bookbinders, artists, and calligraphers—of lost books that have no surviving example, unwritten books that were planned but left unfinished, and fictive works that exist only in fiction. Highlights of the exhibition include William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Won, the lost sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost; Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, stolen from his wife’s bag on a French train in 1922; and the Necronomicon, John Dee’s copy of the eldritch grimoire that has been kept sealed in a Wells Fargo strongbox, as a precaution, since the Krickle accident of 1967. An accompanying book will be published by Oak Knoll and Club Fortsas.