Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West
2024-04-15 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
An archive survives to be revived. The archive as a limit, a thing in a box, is always also an opening. It opens on losses sustained, harms inflicted, the tenacity of survival, and on the persistence of lineages both proud and shameful. But what is it to approach an archive, to unlock the cabinet, lift the top off the box, to begin to read? It is to invite a haunting, which nevertheless begins long before we open any books. And to invite the ghosts into the open, one must be ready to hear what they teach.
Reading from her new book, Mud, Blood, and Ghosts, and screening a short film by Carolina Ebeid that engages archival images, Julie Carr will tell the story of her great-grandfather, Omer Madison Kem, a settler in Nebraska, a founding member of the Populist Party, a three-term Congressman, a practicing spiritualist, and an avid eugenicist. Kem’s final years were spent in Oregon where he owned a power company and became a passionate advocate for the forced sterilization of all those he came to believe were “unfit” to breed. This talk will focus on the ties between the American eugenics movement, American populism, and the American West.
A virtual presentation by Julie Carr, author and professor of English, University of Colorado, Boulder

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Bindings Group
2024-04-15 19:30 - 21:00 (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.
ANITA ENGLES :: THE AMERICAN BOOKBINDERS MUSEUM
Join FABS members interested in Bindings for a Presentation and Discussion with Anita Engles, Executive Director of San Francisco’s American Bookbinders Museum. Anita will share the development history of the museum and expand on modern binding techniques versus hand techniques.
You are invited to show a binding from your collection to discuss, with attention to era.
This program will not be recorded.
To be added to this group’s list please contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org.

Jill Gage on Artists' Books at the Newberry
2024-04-17 18:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club and the Newberry Library
Join library curator Jill Gage of the Newberry in a broad-ranging discussion of an extraordinary collection of artists’ books gathered over several decades by Robert McCamant, the noted book designer, former president of the American Printing History Association, and longtime graphic designer of the Chicago Reader. Mr. McCamant has recently donated parts of this collection to the Newberry and Northwestern, respectively. Images from many of the books will illustrate this conversation.
For the Zoom program, register through the Newberry: https://www.newberry.org/calendar/artists-books

Hidden Gems in Two American Austen Collections
2024-04-17 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Baltimore Bibliophiles
April 17, 2024, 7pm EDT via Zoom. “Hidden Gems in Two American Austen Collections.” The Baltimore Bibliophiles will welcome Juliette Wells, professor of literary studies at Goucher College and the author of three histories of Austen’s readers and fans, most recently A New Jane Austen: How Americans Brought Us the World’s Greatest Novelist (2023)

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81211536046?pwd=[REDACTED]

Passcode: [REDACTED] If you have audio issues, try +13092053325,,81211536046#,,,,*[REDACTED]# US

Joie du Livre April 2024 Fabs Newsletter http://www.fabsocieties.org/?na=v&nk=177-957e608e66&id=35

Binnie Syril Braunstein
The Baltimore Bibliophiles
BSBGC@AOL.com
443-519-6366
http://www.baltimorebibliophiles.org/
https://www.facebook.com/baltimorebibliophiles

We welcome new members! To join, please visit our website, and click on “Apply for Membership.”

FABS 19th Century Group
2024-04-18 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
All are welcome to participate in this congenial group with an open discussion format, which offers a broad look at the 19th Century bibliophilic world; presentations and discussion for collectors, scholars, creatives and other book professionals.
To join the mailing list contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Robert E. Walls: Indigenous Books in the Pacific Northwest: Why Do They Matter?
2024-04-21 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of Washington
About the Event

The Annual Meeting is a great way to reconnect with fellow members. We transact a little business, including making awards to students, and enjoy a special presentation that is the inspiration for a related keepsake. The event is open to the public via Zoom.
This year our featured speaker is educator and scholar Robert E. Walls, whose topic will be “Indigenous Books in the Pacific Northwest: Why Do They Matter?” His article “Indigenous Book History in the Pacific Northwest” appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of The Journal.
This presentation will be a short introduction to the earliest writing and publishing projects of Indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest. Many residents of the region are familiar with the diverse representations of local Indigenous lifeways, from the elegant volumes and photographs of Edward Curtis, to the postcards and curios of the area’s emergent tourist industry, to ethnographic accounts by anthropologists. Yet shortly after treaties were signed in the 1850s, Native people adopted the power of print to publish ancestral histories, fiction, poetry, and political tracts from their own Indigenous perspectives. What is the history of Northwest Indigenous books? How does it relate to Indigenous writing in other areas of North America? Why does this legacy of Indigenous publishing matter?
About the Speaker
Robert Walls was born and raised in the New York City area, but fled to the West and studied anthropology at the University of Washington. After working in a Seattle bookstore for five years, he attended Indiana University where he received his Ph.D. From the early 1990s to 2021 he taught Indigenous Studies and Environmental Studies at Lafayette College, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Notre Dame. He is the author and editor of three books, most recently Resilience Through Writing: A Bibliographic Guide to Indigenous-Authored Publications in the Pacific Northwest before 1960. He is married to the Thoreauvian scholar, Laura Dassow Walls. The hardest thing they ever did was downsize when they recently moved back to the Northwest, selling and donating over 10,000 books in their collection. Fortunately, they kept the best ones, which they use regularly at their home in Edmonds.
Register here: https://www.bookclubofwashington.org/events-1/annual-meeting-with-presentation-by-robert-e-walls

Kent Bicknell on Louisa May Alcott
2024-04-23 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Bibliophile and historian Kent Bicknell will explore his Alcott Family Collection, winner of a recent collecting prize from the New England-based Ticknor Society. Among the highlights will be a fascinating 1876 Russian translation of Little Women; an account of Bronson Alcott’s famed Temple School in Boston; Louisa May Alcott’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.
Kent will also share his ongoing work with the Hawthorne Family Library Project. Professor B. Bernard Cohen (1923-1999) bequeathed to Kent several hundred files he had created through decades of research on the books owned or accessed by members of the Hawthorne family. Kent is digitizing this information with the goal of making it accessible to all.
This is a virtual event. The Zoom link will be sent to the email with which you registered for the event two days, two hours, and 10 minutes prior to the event.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-event-kent-bicknell-on-louisa-may-alcott-tickets-814234616657?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

FABS Living With Books Group
2024-04-23 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
All are welcome to join this lively discussion group that explores the pleasures and paraphernalia of home libraries (Acquisition; History of Collecting; Cataloging and Photographing of collection materials; Home libraries; Book furniture; Conservation and Storage, etc.)
Meets 4th Tuesday of the month.
To join the mailing list contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org.

Jean Pfaelzer: California, A Slave State
2024-04-29 17:00 - 18:15 (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

Language, Decipherment and Translation
2024-05-02 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join Curator Deirdre Lawrence for a pre-recorded tour of her Grolier Club exhibition “Language, Decipherment, and Translation,” followed by a Live Q&A via Zoom. The exhibition is on view in our Second Floor Gallery through May 11, 2024.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-exhibition-tour-language-decipherment-and-translation-tickets-800031685307?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

The Clements Library Collections and Buying Books in Nineteenth-Century America
2024-05-05 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of Washington
We are delighted that Paul Erickson, Director of the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, can join us in Seattle to make a presentation at Folio in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Co-hosted by the Book Club of Washington and the U-M Club of Seattle, the event will also be live streamed on Zoom. After covering the history and importance of the Clements Library, which houses one of the nation’s leading collections of early American history and culture, Paul will explain how books were bought in nineteenth-century America, the subject of his well-received presentation to the Book Club of Detroit.
Paul Erickson is a scholar of nineteenth-century popular fiction and print culture and holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. From 2007-2016 he served as Director of Academic Programs at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. For the next 3+ years, he was Program Director for Humanities, Arts & Culture and American Institutions at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in Cambridge. Since January 2020, he has been the Randolph G. Adams Director of the William Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Located in the heart of the UM campus, the Clements Library is a beautiful classical building designed by Albert Kahn.
To register for the online program, click here: https://www.bookclubofwashington.org/events-1/the-clements-library-collections-and-buying-books-in-nineteenth-century-america?cid=1291030c-f5cd-4f28-ac2a-0f1daf7824dd&utm_campaign=4c8e16e4-1c60-44f6-8d31-908867b3cfc8&utm_medium=mail&utm_source=so

The Oscar Lewis Awards of The Book Club of California
2024-05-06 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
2024 Oscar Lewis Awards

Monday, May 6, 2024, 6-7:15 PM (Pacific)
In-Person and Virtual Presentation

5:00 PM Pacific – Reception
6:00 PM Pacific – Program
The Oscar Lewis Awards were established by the Book Club of California in 1994 in honor of Oscar Lewis (1893-1992), author, historian, and club secretary. This year Dr. Albert L. Hurtado will be recognized for his contributions to Western History and Lawrence G. Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold will be recognized for their contributions to the Book Arts.
This is an in-person and virtual event, open to the public on Zoom
Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

Manuscript Mondays: "The Original Wikipedia: Siku Quanshu"
2024-05-06 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Manuscript Society
“The Original Wikipedia: 18th Century Chinese Emperor Qianlong’s Siku Quanshu Project”
Free, Live Webinar

Monday, May 6, 2024 – 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00PM Pacific (U.S. and Canada)
Presenter: Susan Lahey, MA, ISA CAPP
In 1772, Emperor Qianlong of China, a prolific poet, major art patron, and insatiable collector, ordered the largest encyclopedic compilation of books in Chinese history. Within 10 years, a team of more than 350 scholars and hundreds of editors had compiled 36,381 volumes (2.3 million pages) of the Siku Quanshu. Also known as the Complete Library in Four Sections only seven copies were made. Four of which survive today in Chinese libraries.
Learn about this “wikipedia” of Chinese literature, history, medicine, arts, science, philosophy, and classic Confucian texts and its importance both then and now, including the process of selecting, editing and censoring information.
Presenter: Susan Lahey, MA, ISA CAPP

Susan Lahey, MA, ISA CAPP, is an award-winning certified appraiser of personal property specializing in Asian art. Her ability to read traditional Chinese characters allows her to identify and translate calligraphy and marks on Fine and Decorative Chinese art. She has been a member of the International Society of Appraisers for 14 years, and is the former President of the Canadian Chapter of the ISA. Ms. Lahey holds an Honors BA in Chinese Studies from the University of Toronto; MA with thesis in Classical Chinese Literature from the University of British Columbia; and Post-Graduate Diploma with Distinction in Asian Art from the School of Oriental & African Studies (University of London, England) and Sotheby’s Educational Studies.
Susan lived in Taipei, Taiwan for two years continuing her Mandarin studies and traveled extensively in Asia studying Chinese art collections. She is the President of Eastern Art Consultants Inc., providing independent appraisal, research, and collection management services. Previously, she worked at the Royal Ontario Museum in various capacities and led the Asian art departments of two Toronto auction houses. Ms. Lahey is a highly sought-after instructor of Asian Ceramics and Chinese Decorative Arts specialty courses.
Register in advance for this webinar: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/6917107750766/WN_tfv7u37GTYirUs9jCkYvrQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Aaron Pratt on Shakespeare and Spencer, Secondhand
2024-05-10 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
May Midday Program

You probably misheard it over the radio. Barbra Streisand wasn’t singing about “Secondhand Rose” … she was belting out “Secondhand Prose.”
Just think about some of the most precious volumes in your collection. The ones that you didn’t purchase fresh off the press, but found in a used book store. Or bought at auction. Or stumbled upon at an estate sale.
This idea of acquiring previously owned books isn’t new, and during our May Midday, Aaron Pratt will draw on the formidable resources of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas to tell the tale of the emergence of trade in secondhand volumes.
Drawing on the Ransom Center’s copies of Seneca His Tenne Tragedies (1581) and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1596), Pratt will transport you to the middle of the 17th entry and introduce you to a specialized trade in plays, poetry, and prose fiction. He’ll also reveal the origins of the narratives that we tell about the reception and ultimate canonization of Shakespeare, Spenser, and select contemporaries.
Much published, Aaron Pratt, serves as the Carl & Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center and as Assistant Professor, English.
Don’t just hear about this program. Experience it first hand. Register today!
Zoom presentation is free and open to all.
Zoom begins at 12:00PM CT/1:00 PM ET. Preregistration required via website: https://caxtonclub.org/event-5663535?CalendarViewType=1&SelectedDate=4/25/2024

Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles
2024-05-13 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

Monday, May 13, 2024, 5-6:15 PM (Pacific)
Virtual Presentation

5:00 PM Pacific – Program
The Los Angeles shoreline is one of the most iconic natural landscapes in the United States, if not the world. Yet, in the early twentieth century Angelenos routinely lamented the city’s crowded, polluted, and eroded sands, many of which were private and inaccessible to the public.
Between the 1920s and the 1960s, LA’s engineers, city officials, urban planners, and business elite worked together to transform the relatively untouched beaches into modern playgrounds for the white middle class.
As they opened up vast public spaces for many Angelenos to express themselves, show off their bodies, and forge alternative communities, they made clear that certain groups of beachgoers, including African Americans, gay men and women, and bodybuilders, were no longer welcome.
Sand Rush not only uncovers how the Los Angeles coastline was constructed but also how this major planning and engineering project affected the lives of ordinary city-dwellers and attracted many Americans to move to Southern California.
A virtual presentation by Elsa Devienne, author and assistant professor in US History, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Handpress Era Zoom Group: Decorated Paper and a 16th Century Book Collector/Surgeon/Poet/Spy
2024-05-13 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
May 13 (second Monday of the month), 4:30pm Pacific/7:30pm Eastern: The Handpress Era group (“printed books and other printed works created before ca. 1800”) is hosted by Jennifer Larson and David DiLaura. For May we welcome two speakers:
Rodger Friedman “Some books wrapped in decorated papers.”
I will talk about the Remondini family of Bassano del Grappa, how their little printing firm expanded into producing color-woodblock decorated papers in the 18th century. I will talk about the process, about the history of the blocks themselves, and I will show a few examples.
Dr. Gene Flamm “François Rasse des Neux: Surgeon, Book Collector, Poet and Spy.”
I will discuss (briefly) books in my collection with his signature and how they reflect the activities of this 16th century surgeon.
To join the list for this group contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

From the "Battle of the Books" to an Internationally Known Special Collection
2024-05-14 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Baltimore Bibliophiles
From the “Battle of the Books” to an Internationally Known Special Collection. Baltimore Bibliophiles presents a virtual tour of the Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of Maryland Libraries with curator Kana Jenkins. The Prange Collection is the most comprehensive archive in the world of Japanese print publications issued during the early years of the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1949. Tuesday, May 14, at 7pm EDT via Zoom. Questions? nancymagnuson@comcast.net Join the program at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84898307464?pwd=[REDACTED]

Altered Book: Véronique Plesch on The Many Paradoxes of Tom Phillips’s 'A Humument'
2024-05-15 17:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Baxter Society
The Baxter Society - May 15, at 5:00 pm eastern -
at Glickman Library in Portland Maine, and on Zoom.

Véronique Plesch, Professor of Art History at Colby College and chair of
the Art Department, holds advanced degrees in Art History and Medieval
French Literature from the University of Geneva, and from Princeton
University, where she received her Ph.D. in Art History. She will speak
on “The Many Paradoxes of Tom Phillips’s A Humument.”
A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel is an altered book by British artist
Tom Phillips. It is a piece of art created over W.H. Mallock’s 1892 novel
A Human Document whose title results from the partial deletion of the original
title: A Human document.

To attend, please contact Reid Byers at reidbyers@gmail.com

Year of the Cicada: Buzzing with 17 Years of Biodiversity Achievements
2024-05-16 14:00 - 17:30 (America/Chicago)
Co-sponsored by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, The Field Museum; this notice brought to you by The Caxton Club
When/Where: 5/16/2024 2:00–5:30PM CT The hybrid event is free and open to the public. Advanced registration is required for in-person and virtual attendance via BHL website.
EVENT DETAILS:
In conjunction with the 2024 Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Annual Meeting, the Field Museum will host a public symposium on May 16, 2024. The symposium will be open to all attendees of the BHL Annual Meeting as well as others from the biodiversity community.
In May 2024, the dual emergence of Broods XIII and XIX of the periodical cicadas (Magicicada) will coincide with the 17th anniversary of the launch of the BHL portal. To commemorate this unique convergence, BHL will recognize and celebrate notable achievements in both the biodiversity community and the BHL community in the past 17 years.
Returning to its roots in Chicago, the BHL community is thrilled to gather at the Field Museum, a founding partner of BHL since 2006. The Chicago Botanic Garden, co-host for the Annual Meeting, joined BHL in 2014. Chicago has been pivotal in BHL’s journey, hosting early technical planning sessions in 2004 and the 2011 global biodiversity community meeting titled Life and Literature at The Field Museum.
Register today!
Virtual attendance
The event will also be livestreamed via Zoom Webinar for virtual attendance.
The hybrid event is free and open to the public. Advanced registration is required for in-person and virtual attendance.

FABS 19th Century Zoom Group
2024-05-16 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
May 16 (third Thursday of the month), 4:30pm Pacific/7:30pm Eastern: The 19th Century special interest group, co-hosted by Bill Bryson and Richard Kopley, offers “a broad look at the 19th Century bibliophilic world; presentations and discussion for collectors, scholars, creatives and other book professionals.” The format is informal discussion.
To join the list for this group contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

FABS Bindings Group: Erin Fletcher on Contemporary Embroidered Bindings
2024-05-20 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
May 20, 4:30pm Pacific, 7:30pm EST
Join FABS members interested in Bindings for a presentation and discussion with Erin Fletcher, design binder and proprietor of Herringbone Bindery, on Contemporary Embroidered Bindings.
To join the list for this group contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Living With Books FABS Zoom Group: Reading Places and Cataloging Redux
2024-05-28 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
May 28 (fourth Tuesday of the month), 4:30pm Pacific/7:30pm Eastern: Living With Books: Hosted by The Private Library author Reid Byers, this is a group on the pleasures and paraphernalia of home libraries. The format for the May meeting will be an open discussion about reading places (where do YOU read?) and cataloging redux.
To join contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy, 1836-1932
2024-06-10 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy, 1836-1932

Monday, June 10, 2024, 5-6:15 PM (Pacific)
Virtual Presentation

5:00 PM Pacific – Program
Molly McClain tells the remarkable story of Ellen Browning Scripps (1836–1932), an American newspaperwoman, feminist, suffragist, abolitionist, and social reformer. She used her fortune to support women’s education, the labor movement, and public access to science, the arts, and education.
Born in London, Scripps grew up in rural poverty on the Illinois prairie. She went from rags to riches, living out that cherished American story in which people pull themselves up by their bootstraps with audacity, hard work, and luck. She and her brother, E. W. Scripps, built America’s largest chain of newspapers, linking midwestern industrial cities with booming towns in the West. Less well known today than the papers started by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, Scripps newspapers transformed their owners into millionaires almost overnight.
By the 1920s Scripps was worth an estimated $30 million, most of which she gave away. She established the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and appeared on the cover of Time magazine after founding Scripps College in Claremont, California. She also provided major financial support to organizations worldwide that promised to advance democratic principles and public education.
In Ellen Browning Scripps, McClain brings to life an extraordinary woman who played a vital role in the history of women, California, and the American West.
A virtual presentation by Molly McClain, author and professor of History, University of San Diego

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

Goethe's Color Theory and Estienne's Centones: Handpress Era Zoom Group
2024-06-10 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
June 10, 4:30pm Pacific/7:30pm Eastern: The Handpress Era group (“printed books and other printed works created before ca. 1800”). This month you’ll hear from both our co-hosts. To join the list contact info@fabsocieties.org.

David DiLaura: “Goethean vs Newtonian Color Theories: Communicating Perception using Hand Coloring.” Goethe’s 20-year argument with the Newtonian conception of color hinged not on physical abstractions, but rather what we see. Central to both his works on color, Goethe believed that the nature and origin of color was to be extracted from perceptions, and color perception was communicated by hand-color figures in book plates and playing-card-like ephemera.
Jennifer Larson: “The Neglected Ancient Genre of the Cento and Henri Estienne’s 1578 edition.” Centones are “patchwork” poems composed of disparate lines from epic. In late antiquity, Falconia Proba and Eudocia Augusta composed centones on biblical subjects using lines from Vergil and Homer respectively. I will discuss the Aldine and Stephanus editions of these poems and changing attitudes toward this curious genre in antiquity and the Renaissance.

Julie Park: Containing the Self in Eighteenth-Century Pocket Diaries
2024-06-14 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
Julie Park on Containing the Self in Eighteenth-Century Pocket Diaries: Graphic Forms and Formats of Personal Information Storage
When/Where: 6/14/2024 12:00 PM CT/1:00 PM 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 6/12/24. Seating limit is 24.
Would you like to attend? Click here to register.

EVENT DETAILS:

June Midday Program

“Oh no! Where’s my phone?”
For some people, gasping that out in concert with a frantic beating of pockets, rifling through bags, and swiveling of the head provides the sort of terrifying adrenaline rush a diver might experience upon seeing a shark barreling toward them. (And some would rather face the shark.)
What in the world did people carry and use to record important thoughts, dates, and other deeply personal information before we were blessed by the invention of smart phones?
Pocket diaries. Manuscript books in their purest form.
Join us in June as Julie Park introduces us to the world of eighteenth-century pocket diaries. Dr. Park will be joining us from the Pennsylvania State University where she serves as Paterno Family Librarian for Literature and Professor of English. Much published, she is the editor of the Penn State Series in the History of the Book at Penn State University Press and is the author of My Dark Room: Spaces of the Inner Self in Eighteenth-Century England (University of Chicago Press).
Think of all the contributions diaries have made to the presentation of history, from Pepys to Frank, from Woolf to Scott. Then update your diary to reflect your planned attendance at this — the final midday meeting of the Caxton Club’s 2023–2024 season!
Register today!
Zoom presentation is free and open to all.
Zoom begins at 12:00PM CT/1:00 PM ET. Preregistration required via website.
Register here: https://caxtonclub.org/event-5675385/Registration

Julie Park: Containing the Self in Eighteenth-Century Pocket Diaries
2024-06-14 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
The smartphone is beginning to supersede the pocket diary, but in the 18th century, people carried tiny manuscripts preserving not only dates and addresses, but windows into their lives and personalities. Join Julie Park for “Containing the Self in Eighteenth-Century Pocket Diaries: Graphic Forms and Formats of Personal Information Storage”
Click here to register: https://caxtonclub.org/event-5675385?CalendarViewType=1&SelectedDate=6/30/2024

Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History
2024-06-17 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
Amy Gore brings mainstream narratives about the history of the book into conversation with Indigenous book history, considering among others John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854), the first novel published in the state of California and the first novel published by a Native American.
Register here:

Jack Lynch: The Frontiers of Anglicity
2024-06-17 18:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join The Grolier Club as Jack Lynch, co-curator with fellow Grolierite Bryan A. Garner, of our “Hardly Harmless Drudgery” public exhibition will lecture on “The Frontiers of Anglicity: What’s In, What’s Out?” The “Hardly Harmless Drudgery” exhibition displays landmarks in English lexicography and runs in The Grolier Club ground-floor Exhibition Hall through July 27, 2024.
Dr. Lynch, a Grolier member since 2019, is Distinguished Professor of English and Department Chair at Rutgers University, where he has taught since 1998. His scholarly work focuses on 18th-c. British literature, especially Samuel Johnson; the history of the English language; forgery, fakery and fraud; satire; and literary biography; and he is the author of several books on these subjects, including an abridgment of Dr. Johnson’s “Dictionary,” a biography of Shakespeare that begins with his death and ends with his 300th birthday, a history of the idea of “proper” English, and a wide-ranging history of reference books from ancient Mesopotamian tablets to the latest updates on Wikipedia.
Register here for the online lecture: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-jack-lynch-on-the-frontiers-of-anglicity-tickets-914717804577?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
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. This is a virtual lecture that will be live webcast.
Grolier Club Members
If you are a Grolier Club member, please register yourself and your guests via the Club website. Do not register via Eventbrite.
Public 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 the continuance of that tradition, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Grolier Club.

19th Century FABS Zoom Group
2024-06-20 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Join us for convivial discussion of all things bibliophilic and 19th century! Meets on the third Thursday of the month.
Contact Jennifer at info@fabsocieties.org

Deborah A. Green and Aaron Lansky: "The First Yiddish War Reporter"
2024-06-25 18:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join The Grolier Club as Translator Deborah A. Green and Aaron Lansky, Yiddish Book Center founder and president, have a conversation to celebrate the release of a translation of writings by the poet, translator and literary journalist S. L. Shneiderman (1906-1996), Journey Through the Spanish Civil War: The Hinterlands (White Goat Press). Note: this is a live webcast.
Shneiderman’s coverage of the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War earned him the moniker “the first Yiddish war reporter.” With his wife, Eileen, he became one of the 20th century’s most influential Yiddish journalists and a pillar of New York’s Yiddish literary and journalistic community. His book on the Spanish Civil War was published in 1938 (two years before he immigrated to the U.S.) as Krig in shpanyen: hinterland. White Goat Press is bringing out its first appearance in English.
For this event, some of Shneiderman’s rare editions and related archival material will be on display.
Register for the online event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-on-yiddishenglish-language-journalist-sl-shneiderman-tickets-916587085647?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite
Deborah A. Green is a native Yiddish speaker and translator, author, and attorney. Her research focuses on Jewish participation in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and with Polish partisan groups during WWII. Her translations of Yiddish letters written by Jewish fighters have been featured in anthologies, magazines, and journals.
Aaron Lansky is founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., a nonprofit organization working to recover, celebrate, and regenerate Yiddish and modern Jewish literature and culture. White Goat Press, the Center’s imprint, publishes newly translated work in all genres of fiction and nonfiction. The Center grew out of Lansky’s discovery in the late 1970s of vast numbers of Yiddish books being discarded by younger Jews who could not read their ancestors’ language. Since his first public appeal for unwanted Yiddish books in 1980, when scholars believed just 70,000 volumes were extant and recoverable, more than a million volumes have been gathered at the Center. Lansky has earned degrees from Hampshire College, McGill University, Amherst College, the State University of New York, and Hebrew Union College; received a so-called “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1989; and wrote a bestseller in 2005, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books.
Grolier Club Members
If you are a Grolier Club member, please register yourself and your guests via the Club website. Do not register via Eventbrite.
