American California was defined by the Gold Rush. That event landed at a very special time, the interregnum between Mexican and American rule. That timing led to profound changes in the settling of the West, the laws applied to land and water, and the growth of America that would determine the winner of the Civil […]
Sponsored by The Grolier Club Overview with Dr. Eric Colleary When Harry Houdini died on Halloween 1926, he left behind one of the greatest private libraries of magic, spiritualism, and theatre history including hundreds of thousands of books, prints, photographs, playbills, and ephemera accumulated over three decades of compulsive, competitive collecting across multiple continents. Grolier […]
Following the 1847 establishment of a community in the Salt Lake Valley by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church leaders established the University of Deseret. Its Board of Regents was made up of many of the Church’s leading figures and held its meetings in Brigham Young’s offices. Their purpose was to establish […]
Sponsored by FABS Nov 9 FABS Handpress Era Group: Martha Driver “Caxton in Draft.” Martha will speak about William Caxton's translations, which are often said to be unoriginal and very close to his exemplars. In the case of three of his translations from the classics (Cato, Aesop, Ovid) this is not precisely the case. Instead, […]
Sponsored by The Grolier Club Overview With Suzanne Karr Schmidt Grolier member Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Newberry Library Curator of Rare Books, will give a talk on her discoveries about centuries of books and printed images impressed on fabric. In a vibrant and multilayered preview of a Newberry exhibition, Impressive Textiles: Printing on Fabric (opening Dec. […]
November Midday Program January 3. Princeton, New Jersey. They take the field. One side wearing blue uniforms. The other red. A victory today . . . but the series isn’t over. There will be more contests. Is this the famous first intercollegiate football game ever played? Nope. This contest took place nearly a hundred years […]
Rob Roy Kelly’s published research — including American Wood Type 1828–1900 (1969) — helped fuel a revival of interest in nineteenth-century American printing types. His work continues to be an important starting point for current scholarly inquiry. The University of Texas Press published a monograph David Shields researched, wrote, and designed: The Rob Roy Kelly […]
Sponsored by FABS Nov 19 FABS Bindings Group: This group devoted to the art, craft and history of bookbinding meets monthly on Zoom at 4:30pm PST. To join their mailing list, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org
Sponsored by FABS Nov 19 Join the FABS 19th Century group on Zoom for congenial discussion of all things bibliophilic and 19th century. Contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org.
In this sweeping environmental history of the Mono Lake Basin, Robert B. Marks reveals a larger story of how human actions and natural forces shape the environment. He begins with the region’s Indigenous peoples, followed by the mid-nineteenth-centry arrival Euro-American settles and the dispossession of the Kootzaduka’a people. In the decades that followed, struggles for […]
Sponsored by FABS Nov 23 FABS Living With Books Group. NOTE NEW TIME OF 5:00pm Eastern. Join us and host Reid Byers to discuss the delights and challenges of the private library. Contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org.
Sponsored by The Baltimore Bibliophiles Our speaker for December 15, 2036 is author Eileen Buckholtz. Her 2026 book, Queens of Code, explores the increasingly important role of women in the dawn of the computer age and beyond, within the clandestine halls of the super secret National Security Agency. For a link contact Binnie Syril Braunstein, […]