The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles after 1945
2024-07-01 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
America’s suburbs have been transforming. The conventional story of suburbs as bastions of white, middle-class homeowners no longer describes suburban realities. Today they house a more typical cross-section of the nation—rich, poor, Black American, Latino, Asian, immigrant, the unhoused, the lavishly housed, and everyone in between. Stories of everyday suburban life, in the process, have taken on new inflections.
Nowhere are these changes more vivid than in Los Angeles. In this suburban metropolis and global powerhouse, lily white suburbs have virtually disappeared, and over two-thirds of the County’s suburbs have become majority minority, placing LA at the vanguard of national changes. In Los Angeles, suburban diversification happened earlier and more intensively, offering a glimpse into what may well be America’s future. In The New Suburbia, historian Becky Nicolaides follows the Asian Americans, Black Americans, and Latinos who moved into white neighborhoods that once barred them. They bought homes, enrolled their children in schools, and began navigating suburban life. In places like Pasadena, San Marino, South Gate, and Lakewood, suburbanites faced the challenges of living together in difference. In some communities, diverse residents continued longstanding habits of exclusion and perpetuated metropolitan inequality. In others, they embraced more inclusive, multicultural suburban ideals. Through it all, the common denominators of suburbia remained—low-slung landscapes of single-family homes and families seeking the good life.
Based on a half-century of quantitative data and unpublished oral histories and interviews, The New Suburbia explores vital landscapes where the American dream has endured, even as the dreamers have changed.
A virtual presentation by Becky N. Nicolaides, author, historian, and Research Affiliate at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

A Rare Book Summer Picnic: Conversations on Food, Cultural History and The Dining Table
2024-07-01 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Manuscript Society
Live, Free Webinar
Monday, July 1, 2024 – 8:00 PM Eastern , 5:00 PM Pacific (US and Canada)
Presenters:
Christine von der Linn of Honey & Wax Booksellers
Lizzy Young owner of Lizzy Young Bookseller
With feet firmly planted in both the book and culinary worlds, Christine von der Linn and Lizzy Young will present in a casual, live, panel format stories about books and food, and food history. What we can learn from them, and how we can and should establish the dinner table as a space where we all come together. Plus, they will also share their special goodies, rare finds from both their bookstores and end with a Q&A.
Presenters:
Christine von der Linn
Christine von der Linn was born and raised in the Hudson River Valley. A graduate of Bard College, she studied art & architectural history, material culture and foodways. She managed a bookstore and was an archivist of the Livingston family library and art collection at the Clermont State Historic Site in Columbia County before moving to New York City.
In 1993, Christine joined Swann Auction Galleries in New York City and served as a specialist in rare books, cataloguing and selling literature, fine press, livres d’artiste, and illustrated books. She co-founded both their Illustration Art Department and LGBTQ+ Art, Material Culture & History sales. In 2023 she joined Honey & Wax Booksellers to continue her love of books and illustration, and to lecture, write, and appraise material in her areas of expertise. While working, Christine graduated from Natural Gourmet/ICE Culinary Institute. She continues her lifelong interest in food, drink, and sustainable agriculture as president of the board of trustees of the Metuchen Farmers Market in New Jersey.
Lizzy Young
Lizzy’s first career was as a pastry chef, studying at Peter Kump’s Cooking School under Nick Malgeiri. Lizzy went on to work at “Windows on the World.” Later, Lizzy made her way to Gourmet Magazine and eventually became a Food Editor.
In 2009, she began her career in bookselling joining her father, Roy Young of RoYoung Bookseller. During the three years she worked with Roy, Lizzy learned every aspect of the rare book trade and attended the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. In 2011 Lizzy stepped out on her own, opening Lizzy Young Booksellers. “At Lizzy Young Bookseller, we sell Rare Books, Ephemera, and Manuscripts with a focus on Food & Drink History, Women’s History, Cultural History, Children’s Books, and anything else that makes us smile.” Her main client base is comprised of public and private Special Collections at Universities and libraries around the world.
Registration Is Required: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TO-JbqalSsCgPSiSvpl8hw
[You will receive a confirmation email upon registration.]

Movable Mayhem: Pop-Up Books through the Ages
2024-07-07 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of Washington
Prepare to be captivated by these print wonders that move. Volvelles, flaps, and pop-ups, oh my!
Renaissance pop-up book expert Suzanne Karr Schmidt will walk us through her most recent Newberry Library exhibition and related recent acquisitions, in a look at the long history of the movable book from the twelfth century to the present.
Register here for the virtual event: https://www.bookclubofwashington.org/events-1/movable-mayhem-pop-up-books-through-the-ages
Suzanne Karr Schmidt (PhD Yale) has been the George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Chicago’s Newberry Library since 2017, following eight years as a fellow and curator in Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also currently serving as the Director of the Movable Book Society (www.movablebooksociety.org), an international organization for collectors, scholars, and makers of pop-up books founded in 1993.
A historian of early modern art, books, prints, and science, her monograph, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance, appeared in 2018. She publishes widely on hybridity and materiality in print, particularly on the “Renaissance Pop-Up Book.” Expanding her movable books range up to the present, she has most recently curated the playful Newberry exhibition, Pop-Up Books Through the Ages (2023), which examines this overlooked artform from the medieval to the modern era. A quick video tour of the exhibit can be found here.
Her previous prizewinning shows include her co-curated 2020 Newberry exhibition Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta, and her 2011 Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life, both of which featured exhibition catalogues. Her next Newberry exhibition and catalogue, slated for fall 2026, will be on the topic of the ostentatious art of Printing on Fabric from the Renaissance to today.
Additional print resources:
An introduction to pop-up books written to accompany the 2023 exhibition: https://dcc.newberry.org/?p=21137
Her journal article “Flaps, Volvelles, and Vellum in Pre-Modern Movable Manuscript and Print” from 2022 which has some overlap with her presentation:
https://jib.pop-app.org/index.php/jib/article/view/26/32

Al Martinez in the Korean War: A Future Columnist Hones His Craft
2024-07-08 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
For more than twenty years, the Los Angeles Times columnist Al Martinez (1929-2015) delighted, and enriched the lives of, thousands of readers across southern California. An Oakland native, he attended San Francisco State College. Later, he was a reporter for the Richmond Independent and the Oakland Tribune before being lured to Los Angeles to write for the Times. By the time he retired in 2009, he had earned an extensive array of awards and honors, including three shared Pulitzers and the National Headliner Award for the best column in the U.S.
Before becoming a professional journalist, Martinez served in the Korean War at the age of 21 with the U.S. Marines, from 1951-1952, first on the battle front and then as a war correspondent. He dispatched letters almost daily to his young bride Joanne.
Now a volume of Al Martinez’ Korean War letters, I Promise You I’ll Be Home, has been published by McFarland and Co. Written from the unique perspective of an obviously gifted professional writer at the beginning of his career, his letters home capture his experiences eloquently and with depth of understanding as they express the dangers, hardships, fear, friendships, and even humor of life at the front. His vivid, often humorous pen-and-ink drawings portray scenes from the front lines.
The letters are all housed in the archive of his papers at The Huntington Library. They form not only an important record for the history of the largely ignored Korean War, but also a crackling good narrative of one Marine’s time at the battle front and as a combat correspondent. Even as a young writer, he was among the very best in storytelling and in the elegance of his prose.
A virtual presentation by Sara S. Hodson, author and retired curator of literary collections for The Huntington Library

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Handpress Era Zoom: First Edition Hoyle on Whist and 18th Century Open Mic
2024-07-08 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
July 8: Handpress Era (second Monday of the month). This month we will hear from David Levy about a trip to Aberdeen to visit one of four known copies of the first edition of A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742), bound with other works by Hoyle on backgammon and piquet. In a talk illustrated with examples from his collection and from his research, David demonstrates how the book, initially mysterious, came to reveal its story. After Q&A, we’ll have open mic for the 18th century! Please share your printed item from 1700-1799. No powerpoint needed.
To join this list and receive links to the sessions, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

California: A Slave State
2024-07-15 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russian otter hunters shipped Alaska Natives—the first slaves transported into California—and launched a Pacific slave triangle to China. Plantation slaves were marched across the plains for the Gold Rush. San Quentin Prison incubated California’s carceral state. Kidnapped Chinese girls were sold in caged brothels in early San Francisco. Indian boarding schools supplied new farms and hotels with unfree child workers.
By looking west to California, Jean Pfaelzer upends our understanding of slavery as a North-South struggle and reveals how the enslaved in California fought, fled, and resisted human bondage. In unyielding research and vivid interviews, Pfaelzer exposes how California gorged on slavery, an appetite that persists today in a global trade in human beings lured by promises of jobs but who instead are imprisoned in sweatshops and remote marijuana grows, or sold as nannies and sex workers.
A virtual presentation by Jean Pfaelzer, author and professor emerita of English and American Studies, University of Delaware

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Bindings Zoom: The Prince of Binders: Joseph Altemus and the Apex of Publishers' Bindings in the Nineteenth Century
2024-07-15 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The Prince of Binders”: Joseph Altemus and the Apex of Publishers’ Bindings in the Nineteenth Century” Todd Pattison.
July 15, Monday, 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific. Zoom
Todd will talk about the commercial bindings produced by the firm of Joseph Altemus, a Philadelphia bookbinder who produced the widest range of commercial bindings between 1845 and 1853. Todd Pattison is the Conservator for American Ancestors, Vice President of the Guild of Book Workers, and Fellow in the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC).
To get on the list for this group, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

David Pearson: Looking at Bookbindings from Cambridge and Elsewhere
2024-07-18 18:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Clubng
Renowned scholar David Pearson will lecture on findings that culminated in his recent book, Cambridge Bookbinding 1450-1770 (The Legacy Press, 2023). It provides an overview of the development of Cambridge binding through the handpress period, including the evolution of styles and materials, customers, and binders. This illustrated talk will present highlights and new discoveries while considering wider ideas about the ways we study historic bindings, the things we can learn from them, and the questions we should ask.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-looking-at-bookbindings-from-cambridge-and-elsewhere-tickets-939886936127?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite

FABS 19th Century Zoom
2024-07-18 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
July 18: 19th Century Group (third Thursday of the month). Congenial conversation on all things 19th-century and bookish. You are welcome!

The Material Culture of Advertising: Treasures from the Winterthur Library’s Collection of Trade Literature
2024-07-22 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
Before Amazon, before big box stores, and even before mailboxes sagged under the weight of catalogs in the mid-20th century, customers and shop-owners alike turned to a wide variety of media to select their purchases, and to aspire to grander lifestyles. Trade cards, trade catalogs, advertising ephemera, and sales samples illuminate the art of buying, selling, and dreaming in the past, painting a picture of the everyday lives of Americans as consumers. These items can be quite beautiful – they were created to facilitate sales, after all – and reflect broader aesthetic trends, as well as advertising styles, cultural values, and the distribution of products historically. And beyond its intended use as a promotional tool, trade media often found a second life at the hands of 19th century scrapbookers.
The dynamic nature of trade material makes it a valuable tool for research, as well as creative inspiration. The Winterthur Library, located outside Wilmington, Delaware, holds a vibrant and vast collection of such trade material, including fabric swatch books, hand-drawn watercolor catalogs, engraved promotional cards, chromolithographed labels, and more – hundreds of thousands of items. Join Winterthur Library Curator of Special Collections Allie Alvis as they journey through 400 years of advertising and promotion in America and Europe, highlighting some of the wonderful (and sometimes weird) trade treasures from the library’s collection and presenting them in the broader milieu of material culture.
A virtual presentation by Alexandra Alvis, book historian and curator, special collections, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

Hardly Harmless Drudgery: Landmarks in English Lexicography
2024-07-23 18:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join us for a Virtual Tour and Curator Q&A
Join the Grolier Club for a pre-recorded video walk-through of the “Hardly Harmless Drudgery” exhibition followed by a live Q&A via Zoom with the show’s co-curators, Bryan Garner and Jack Lynch. This public exhibition is on view at the Grolier Club through July 27, 2024.
About this Exhibition
Samuel Johnson, creator of the first great English dictionary, wickedly mocked his own trade when he defined lexicographer as “A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.” But dictionaries are serious business, and the people who drudge away at them are anything but harmless. Co-curated by Grolier Club members Bryan A. Garner (Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University) and Jack Lynch (Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University), Hardly Harmless Drudgery traces the history of English-language lexicography from its origins to its digital present in some 100 objects, from early printed books to CD-ROMs. Highlights include important dictionaries and manuscripts—mostly from Garner’s collection—including items from Johnson, Noah Webster, and the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as portraits, advertisements, lexicographic ephemera, and letters. An accompanying monograph from Godine was published in March 2024.
Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-tour-and-curator-qa-hardly-harmless-drudgery-tickets-944311780957?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite

FABS Living With Books Zoom: Disaster Preparation and How Do You Photograph Your Books?
2024-07-23 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
July 23: Living With Books (fourth Tuesday of the month). Hosted by Reid Byers. All the pleasures and paraphernalia of home libraries! The discussion topics this month are Disaster Preparation and How Do You Photograph Your Books?.
To get on the list for this group and receive links, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Miniature Book Society Conclave
2024-07-28 12:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Miniature Book Society Book Fair Aug 25 2024
Los Angeles Omni Hotel 12-5pm. Free Admission and Open to the Public.
The Miniature Book Society will hold their 40th annual Grand Conclave (a weekend conference) on Friday–Sunday Aug 23-25 at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel at California Plaza. Featuring speakers, presentations, field trips, a Silent Auction and a Live auction and culminating in the Sunday Book Fair which is open to the public 12-5 and is FREE. Families and children are encouraged to attend, as well as collectors. Domestic and international miniature booksellers will have a wide range of miniature books – antique, contemporary, artists books and children’s at all price points.
Register for the weekend Conclave at mbs.org or just come to the Book Fair! It could be a life-changing experience!

Manuscript Mondays: Caring for Your Manuscript Collection
2024-08-05 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Manuscript Society
Free, Live, Webinar
Monday, August 5, 2024, 8:00PM Eastern Time
Presenter: Rebecca Elder, Elder Cultural Preservation
Join us for a live presentation to learn more about properly caring for your manuscript collection. Experienced cultural heritage preservation consultant, Rebecca Elder will lead us through the physical aspects of paper documents, as well as proper storing and handling techniques for the longevity of your collection. It is not as hard as you think! Plus a Question and Answer.
Presenter: Rebecca Elder
Rebecca Elder is an experienced cultural heritage preservation consultant who helps clients find practical and achievable solutions to care for their history collections. She collaborates with libraries, museums, archives, municipalities and families to tailor preservation plans to their resources and timelines.
In 2014, Rebecca founded Rebecca Elder Cultural Heritage Preservation to provide preservation advice to clients holding history collections. She has also worked at Amigos Library Services, the Harvard University Libraries and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
She received her MSIS and a Certificate of Advanced Studies for Conservation of Library and Archival Materials from the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, and now is adjunct faculty at the iSchool, teaching Preservation Management and Treatment Techniques for Bound Materials. Rebecca also teaches for museumstudy.com and for Kent State University’s Graduate School of Information.
Rebecca is a Professional Associate member of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. She also engages in professional service with the American Institute for Conservation, the Society of American Archivists, the Society of Southwest Archivists, the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums, and the American Association for State and Local History.
Registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9317214157507/WN_-Puj-UjfTrGdklADccvslQ
You will receive email confirmation when you register.

Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action
2024-08-12 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action examines the leadership strategies that Black women educators have employed as influential power brokers in predominantly white colleges and universities in the United States. Author Donna J. Nicol tells the extraordinary story of Dr. Claudia H. Hampton, the California State University (CSU) system’s first Black woman trustee, who later became the board’s first woman chair, and her twenty-year fight (1974–94) to increase access within the CSU for historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. Amid a growing white backlash against changes brought on by the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Nicol argues that Hampton enacted “sly civility” to persuade fellow trustees, CSU system officials, and state lawmakers to enforce federal and state affirmative action mandates.
Black Woman on Board explores how Hampton methodically “played the game of boardsmanship,” using the soft power she cultivated amongst her peers to remove barriers that might have impeded the implementation and expansion of affirmative action policies and programs. In illuminating the ways that Hampton transformed the CSU as the “affirmative action trustee,” this remarkable book makes an important contribution to the history of higher education and to the historiography of Black women’s educational leadership in the post-Civil Rights era.
A virtual presentation by Dr. Donna J. Nicol, associate dean, College of Liberal Arts, California State University, Long Beach, CA

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS 19th Century Zoom Group
2024-08-15 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Aug 15: 19th Century Group (third Thursday of the month). Congenial conversation on all things 19th-century and bookish. You are welcome! To join the list contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

The Alcott Family — Lessons from the 19th Century
2024-08-19 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
Progressive school founder, collector and bibliophile Kent Bicknell will present on his Alcott Family Collection, winner of a recent prize from the New England-based Ticknor Society. Built around the lives and work of Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), her talented sister, the artist May Alcott Nieriker, and her parents, social worker, Abigail Alcott and progressive educator and reformer, Bronson Alcott, highlights include an account of Bronson Alcott’s famed Temple School in Boston; Louisa’s annotated copy of A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson; and four unpublished letters from the artist, May Alcott Nieriker, along with images of her paintings. Through more than thirty years of collecting, Kent has assembled a group of primary and secondary source materials related to this relatively “modern” family, and will share select manuscripts, rare books, letters and artwork to reveal stories that connect the Alcott family to each other, to the larger community of the 19th century, and to our own lives today.
A virtual presentation by Kent Bicknell, author, scholar, and collector

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Zoom: Madison Good on Bookbinder Margaret Neilson Armstrong
2024-08-19 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Join FABS’s Bindings Zoom group for a presentation and discussion with Madison Good about bookbinder Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867-1944). Madison will talk about Margaret Armstrong’s background and design career during the Art Nouveau period in America. The presentation will focus on Armstrong’s work as a designer of commercial bindings.
Madison Good is a recent graduate of the Master’s program at Valdosta State University and currently works for Ohio State University’s Thompson Special Collections Department.
This program will not be recorded.
To get on the list for this group and receive links to the events, contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org)

Fabulous Fore-Edge Paintings with Wendy Wasman
2024-08-22 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by NOBS (Northeast Ohio Bibliophilic Society)
Thursday, August 22, 7-8:30pm
What are fore-edge paintings? Join NOBS Board member and Loganberry Books rare books specialist Wendy Wasman to learn all about fore-edge paintings. You’ll see some amazing examples of these hidden treasures!
We will meet at Loganberry Books at 7:00 PM or, if you prefer, you may join us virtually via Zoom. For the link, contact Loganberry Books: books@logan.com

American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail
2024-08-26 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
In popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous land. As historian Sarah Keyes illuminates, their graves ultimately became the seeds of U.S. expansion.
By the 1850s, cholera epidemics, ordinary diseases, and violence had remade the Trail into an American burial ground that imbued migrant deaths with symbolic power. In subsequent decades, U.S. officials and citizens leveraged Trail graves to claim Native ground. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples pointed to their own sacred burial grounds to dispute these same claims and maintain their land. These efforts built on anti-removal campaigns of the 1820s and 30s, which had established the link between death and territorial claims on which the significance of the Overland Trail came to rest.
In placing death at the center of the history of the Overland Trail, American Burial Ground offers a sweeping and long overdue reinterpretation of this historic touchstone. In this telling, westward migration was a harrowing journey weighed down by the demands of caring for the sick and dying. From a tale of triumph comes one of struggle, defined as much by Indigenous peoples’ actions as it was by white expansion. And, finally, from a migration to the Pacific emerges instead a trail of graves. Graves that ultimately undergirded Native dispossession.
An in-person and virtual presentation by Sarah Keyes, author, historian, and assistant professor of history, University of Nevada, Reno.
Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Living With Books Zoom Group
2024-08-27 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The FABS Living With Books Zoom Group, hosted by Reid Byers, invites you to their lively monthly discussion of home libraries, with all their pleasures and paraphernalia. Recent discussions have included cataloging, lighting, photographing books, bookmarks, and much more. This month: best library shelving vs. actual shelving; dual-purpose bookrooms.
NOTE change of time; this group will now meet at 7:00pm EST instead of 7:30pm.
To get on the list and receive links, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.orgfurf

FABS Handpress: John Bidwell on the 1795 English Translation of Paul et Virginie
2024-09-09 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The FABS Handpress Group will host a presentation by John Bidwell, Curator Emeritus at the Morgan Library & Museum. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie was a bestseller during the Romantic era. One of its bibliographers counted 269 editions published between 1789 and 1962. Bidwell will describe the 1795 first edition of the English translation by Helen Maria Williams, a book that has stumped the bibliographers because it appeared without an imprint. The paper, type, illustrations, and bindings – even the flyleaves in his copy – provide evidence for attributing it to the English Press in Paris, operated by the notorious radical John Hurford Stone. Here, a close scrutiny of handpress books can explain why Stone concealed his name and how he exported books to England even though it was at war with France.
After Q&A, we’ll have open mic for New Acquisitions (broadly construed)!
(September 9; contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org)

Manuscript Mondays: Artist Paul Kane – From Field Notes to Book
2024-09-09 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Manuscript Society
From Field Notes to Book:
Editing for Publication Three Stages of Artist Paul Kane’s Western Travel Narrative, 1845–1848
Manuscript Mondays – Free – Live Webinar
Special Date – Monday, September 9, 2024
8:00 PM Eastern
Presenter: Dr. Ian S. MacLaren
Artist Paul Kane (1810–1871) traveled by canoe and boat from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean in the mid-1840s. His aim was to sketch Native Americans in Wisconsin and Oregon territories and in lands controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company. An uneducated artist, Kane wrote in inimitable spelling both field notes and portrait and landscape logs.
Transcribing and publishing them for the first time, Ian MacLaren has chosen also to present with them both his transcription of a draft manuscript for Kane’s eventual book, written in two hands, neither of them the artist’s, and a facsimile of the first edition of Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America, which Longmans published in London in February 1859. MacLaren will discuss how he reached decisions about the presentation of these three stages of the Kane narrative in his recently released four-volume work, Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America: Writings and Art, Life and Times (2024). Plus a Q&A.
Presenter: Ian S. MacLaren
Ian S. MacLaren taught in the History and Classics, and English and Film Studies departments at the University of Alberta for more than thirty years. His recently published four-volume book Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America: Writings and Art, Life and Times aims to contribute to ethno-history, book history, fur-trade history, and art history. Recent publications by MacLaren pertain to Kane and to Captain Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Other areas of scholarly interest include: The histories of national parks, Arctic exploration, and the early literature of North America in English.
To Register
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9317214157507/WN_fB-_M1jeQYKPsEbHZIaPsw
[You will receive an email confirming registration]

Nora Davies on Crymes and Rhymes: The Broadside Ballad and the Celebrity Criminal
2024-09-13 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
When/Where: FRI 9/13/2024 12:00PM CT/1:00PM ET. Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Preregistration required via website. ULCC live attendance–Zoom presentation and optional lunch ($35) following. Reservations required by 12PM CT 9/11/24. Seating limit is 24.
Would you like to attend? Click here to register.

EVENT DETAILS:

September Midday Program

What better way to spend Friday the 13th than in the company of printers, prevaricators, peddlers, and penny broadsides?
In early modern London, where newspapers were a sevenpence luxury, broadsides were the affordable single-sheet news source for the masses. They specialized in singing the praises of criminals who could capture the public’s imagination through a bold prison break, a brazen break-in, a terrifying and deadly encounter, and a tearful repentance in the shadow of the gallows. The modern newsroom adage that if it bleeds it leads draws its inspiration from these tales … as did (and do) a host of novels and detective stories.
Join us as Nora Davies recounts the story in a generously illustrated program. Nora will be coming to us from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. As a digital asset specialist Davies provides instruction on copyright, cataloging, image research, editing, and more. Worry not, Chicagoans, Nora’s Midwest bona fides include an English degree from nearby Beloit College and an MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Cozy up to Zoom and be transported to the crowded, noisy streets of London. But don’t worry about pickpockets or cutpurses … we’ll keep your reservation safe!
Live attendance and optional lunch
View Zoom program on eighth floor, Steel Room, Union League Club. Presentation begins at 12:00 PM CT. Optional lunch immediately following in the fourth floor Rendezvous. $35 includes non-alcoholic beverage, a cup of soup, and your choice of sandwich, salad, or hot entree, tax, and tip.
Zoom presentation is free and open to all.
Zoom begins at 12:00PM CT/1:00 PM ET. Preregistration required via website.

FABS Bindings Zoom Group
2024-09-16 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The Bindings Interest Group hosts discussions and presentations that share collections and information on bookbindings of all periods. Topics include, but are not limited to, history, design and aesthetics, innovation, materials and craft techniques. You are welcome to join us! To get on the mailing list contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org)

Spencer Stuart: "Members Needed: Sustainable Futures for Bibliophilic Societies.”
2024-09-17 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Baltimore Bibliophiles
Please join us on Tuesday, September 17, at 7:00 pm EDT/4:00pm EDT (via ZOOM) when Collections Advisor Spencer W. Stuart shares insights and common challenges from recent organizational audits for Bibliophilic societies as well as other cultural organizations worldwide.
The COVID Pandemic was an extremely disruptive period for non-profit cultural organizations. Some pivoted to online offerings and expanded their audiences, while others recoiled due to a pre-COVID lack of long-term planning. Emerging from this, many Societies still have major issues to address in order to attract new members, maintain their financial commitment and foster their volunteer support.
Through this talk, we will explore what is currently required to carry out this process and the potential outcomes it can generate for an organization seeking to both maintain current membership and grow long-term.
This program is not being recorded! So come prepared to listen and learn – and take copious notes!
To receive a link please contact
Binnie Syril Braunstein
The Baltimore Bibliophiles
BSBGC@aol.com
443-519-6366
www.BaltimoreBibliophiles.org

FABS 19th Century Zoom Group
2024-09-19 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
19th Century Group (third Thursday of the month). Congenial conversation on all things 19th-century and bookish. You are welcome! To join the list contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Brendan Dooley on Renaissance Transmission of News
2024-09-20 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club

Join the Grolier Club for this live webcast via Zoom. Brendan Dooley, professor of Renaissance Studies, College of Arts, University College Cork, will lecture on one of the Renaissance’s great forgotten inventions: regular public transmission of written news. Although exchanging information of general interest regarding daily occurrences has been a feature of European societies for as long as historical memory extends, an influential Renaissance novelty was the creation of specific writing genres (manuscript and print) for telling about the news each week. Drivers of this development, apart from sheer curiosity, included state officials seeking opportunities, merchants seeking markets, and writers seeking jobs. Traditional settings for news conversations, in homes, at court, and in public squares, were thus supplied with topics originating not only from local occurrences but from far away, not only from books, pamphlets, and private letters but also from periodical news sheets covering major events of the day, with significant effects on widespread ways of thinking and behaving. Dooley’s examples will show how Renaissance news evolved from manuscript newsletters into printed newspapers, with long-term consequences still keenly felt.
This program will be live webcast and registrants will receive a Zoom link two days before the event.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-brendan-dooley-on-renaissance-transmission-of-news-tickets-999611122777?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite
If you are a Grolier Club member, please register yourself and your guests via the Club website. Do not register via Eventbrite.
Support
We appreciate your interest in the Grolier Club’s programming on the art and history of the book. For more than 130 years we have offered our exhibitions and lectures to the public, free of charge. If you have enjoyed these offerings, and would like to support that tradition, and help ensure that it continues, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Grolier Club.

In Person: Book Club of Washington 2024 Emory Award
2024-09-22 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of Washington
FABS members are invited to join the BCW for this in-person event Sept 22, 2:00pm PDT
RSVP required.
Tanya Patton, Elise Severe, and Deb Fortner from Dayton, Washington are receiving the 2024 Emory Award for their leadership in saving the Dayton Memorial Library in Columbia County, Washington. Without their actions, Dayton could have become the first library in the US to be shut down because of book challenges.
Last year’s fight was the second time Tanya Patton, former chair of the Dayton Library Board, has helped save the library. Patton also led the 2005 campaign to create the rural library district that restructured the library’s funding model so it could remain open and continue serving the community.
Deb Fortner is a wheat-farmer in Columbia County who worked alongside Patton to save the Dayton Library and build community support for the library in the face of 2023’s dissolution challenge.
Elise Severe founded Neighbors United for Progress, the political action organization that sued to stop the library dissolution measure from going on the November ballot. Severe was also one of the two named plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The group attempting to shut down the library chose to pursue dissolution because library staff refused to remove over one hundred books relating to gender, sexuality, and race from the children’s and young adult collections. Columbia County Superior Court Commissioner Julie Karl explained the stakes in her ruling against the dissolution ballot measure. “The city and county would lose a valuable resource that would disproportionately affect the poorest members of this community that depend on this library,” she said.
The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom’s 2023 report documented 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources, with public libraries coming under greater attack than ever before. The number of book titles targeted at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, and book challenges at public libraries now account for about 46% of all book challenges. Finally, the ALA’s 2023 report documented the highest number of challenged book titles they have ever recorded. Titles representing the voices of LGBTQ and BIPOC individuals made up 47% of those censorship attempts.
Preserving public access to books has rarely been more urgent. In the face of historic levels of attempted censorship, more communities across the country – and across Washington state — will need to stand up and fight for books and for libraries. By presenting this award, The Book Club of Washington affirms that it stands with them.

FABS Living With Books Zoom Group
2024-09-24 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
This congenial group explores all the pleasures and challenges of home libraries: Acquisition; History of Collecting; Cataloging and Photographing of collection materials; Home libraries; Book furniture; Conservation and Storage, etc. You are welcome to join us!
Topics for September:
Flat Storage in the Library.
(art, manuscripts, other documents)

Storage for your Ornamenta Bibliotheca
(other collections – coins, music, statues,
chess sets, beatles, stamps, etc)
To get on the list, contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org).
