Virtual Symposium: Billy Budd at 100
2024-10-09 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club

Join The Grolier Club for a livestreamed Symposium on Billy Budd in conjunction with Grolierite William Palmer Johnston’s exhibition, Melville’s Billy Budd at 100, running in the Club’s second-floor Gallery through November 9, 2024. The Club will host this symposium on Herman Melville and his novella Billy Budd in the ground-floor Exhibition Hall. Note: this is a live webcast.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-symposium-billy-budd-at-100-tickets-1027575504997?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite
The panel discussion among prominent Melvillians will address Melville’s unfinished masterpiece, each speaker commenting on the centennial exhibition and its implications from his own perspective. There will then follow a discussion on topics including textual history, biographical context during the years of writing the “prose and poem concoction,” the text’s cultural journey in the 20th and 21st centuries, and its adaptations into theater, opera, film and the visual arts, noting areas for future exploration. The moderator for the evening will be Richard Brodhead, who taught English and American literature at Yale for 32 years before becoming president of Duke University. Brodhead’s writings on Melville include Hawthorne, Melville and the Novel, The School of Hawthorne, and New Essays on Moby Dick. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and chaired the Academy’s 2013 commission on the humanities. The speakers will be John Bryant, David Greven, and Grolier members G. Thomas Tanselle and Henry Wessells.
Dr. Bryant, Professor Emeritus of English at Hofstra University, is a leading Melville scholar. Founding editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and director of the Melville Electronic Library, he received the Distinguished Editor Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals in 2015. He has contributed several books and numerous essays on Melville, American literature, and scholarly editing, including Melville and Repose (Oxford) and The Fluid Text (Michigan). He is currently working on the last volume of his three-volume biography, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life (Wiley). Dr. Greven is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. His books include All the Devils Are Here: American Romanticism and Literary Influence (The University of Virginia Press, 2024) and a study of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Intimate Violence (Oxford University Press, 2017). Tom Tanselle, a Past President of the Grolier Club, is a bibliographical scholar who for many years was the vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University. He was also one of the three primary editors of the fifteen-volume Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Melville, and he has published many other books. Henry Wessells is a writer and antiquarian bookseller in New York. He is author of A Conversation Larger than the Universe (2018), a catalogue accompanying his member’s exhibition of the same name, The Private Life of Books (2020), and A Melville Census, John Marr & Timoleon (forthcoming, 2025).
Melville’s Billy Budd at 100 commemorates the centenary of the posthumous and first publication of Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd (1924), the story of a young “Handsome Sailor” impressed into the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century, falsely accused of mutiny, and hanged after a drumhead trial for striking and killing his accuser. The exhibition highlights the composition, preservation, discovery, and ongoing transmission of a singular work of art – a “prose and poem concoction” – left unfinished on Melville’s desk at his death in 1891. Curated by Grolier Club member William Palmer Johnston from his extensive Melville Collection, the exhibition features more than 50 items, including multiple scholarly transcriptions of the Billy Budd manuscript, as well as illustrations, photographs, dust jackets, movie posters, the opera libretto, playbills, a commemorative stamp, unique fine bindings for limited editions, and artwork by Barry Moser. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue published by the Grolier Club.

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.

Charles Johanningsmeier on Tauchnitz Editions
2024-10-11 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
EVENT DETAILS:

October Midday Program

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” – Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
Leipzig. Tauchnitz. These names probably don’t leap to mind when you consider the history of popularizing American and British culture abroad. Yet one – a city – and the other – a family of German printers and publishers – played a role in doing just that.
Tauchnitz and Leipzig were the reason that in the mid-1920s, at an outdoor cafe in Paris, you might see a young Parisian forgetting to affect ennui while engrossed in Zane Grey’s The Thundering Herd … in English.
An innovator in publishing softcover, or paperbound, books, Tauchnitz produced books in English for distribution beyond US and UK borders. The publisher was popular with American and British authors, because Tauchnitz arranged to pay royalties – unlike publishers who pirated works for distribution beyond the reach of American and UK copyright law.
Join Caxtonian Charles Johanningsmeier as he reveals the fascinating tale of the rise and fall of the all-too-tempting-to-collect Tauchnitz editions. He will be joining us from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, where he occupies the Issacson Chair as Professor of English.
Tune in via Zoom or enjoy an afternoon out at the Union League Club, where we’ll watch the program on a big, plenty loud flat screen TV and then adjourn to enjoy a sumptuous array of luncheon choices. A cup or a bowl of soup, salads, sandwiches made to order, tempting special entrees … all generously portioned. A great value in food and food for thought!
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.
Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

Creatures of Commerce: Animal Advertising Ephemera from the Bruce Shyer Collection
2024-10-14 18:00 - 19:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California

Humans have been fascinated by animal imagery since the prehistoric era when cavemen painted images of animals on walls to symbolically capture their prey and to record their observations. With the advent of the printing press, animal imagery was used as a symbol for the press itself. For example, the great fifteenth century printer Aldus Manutius employed the image of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor as his printer’s mark.
With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, companies prolifically utilized animal imagery to promote products and services. Advertisers often used animal images to link an animal’s desired characteristics to their products.
On view are hundreds of examples of animal advertising primarily printed in the nineteenth century, including trade cards, menus, box tops, bookmarks, greeting cards, brochures, table tents, metamorphic cards, original art, and celluloid novelties.
Of course, Dorothy’s “lions and tigers and bears” are represented. But, a tower of giraffes, a parade of elephants, a pandemonium of parrots, a parliament of owls, a pounce of cats, an army of frogs, a barrel of monkeys, and more also appear.
Exhibition opening with remarks by Bruce Shyer, collector, curator, and past president of the Ephemera Society of America
** This is an in-person event at the Book Club in San Francisco and streamed on Zoom. The exhibition will be on view through February 14, 2025

Register to attend the virtual presentation on Zoom

FABS Handpress Era: John Peckham's Perspectiva Communis + Open Mic for 16th Century
2024-10-14 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
David DiLaura will speak on “John Peckham’s Perspectiva Communis: An example of the transition from manuscript to the handpress.”
In the half-century after the appearance of moveable type printing in the Latin West, many important, widely used texts on natural philosophy appeared in print. Written in about 1270, Peckham’s Perspectiva Communis was the most widely used optics text in medieval Europe. First printed at Milan in 1482, its rich manuscript tradition and early printed editions show the nature of this transition and the challenges it presented, particularly regarding figures and diagrams.
After Q&A we will have OPEN MIC for 16th century books. Show us yours!
To join this mailing list contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Virtual Tour and Curator Q&A for Billy Budd at 100 Exhibition
2024-10-17 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Curator William Palmer Johnston leads a prerecorded tour of his exhibition “Melville’s Billy Budd at 100” followed by a live online Q&A.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-tour-and-curator-qa-for-billy-budd-at-100-exhibition-tickets-1027617320067?aff=erelpanelorg
Melville’s Billy Budd at 100 commemorates the centenary of the posthumous and first publication of Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd (1924), the story of a young “Handsome Sailor” impressed into the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th century, falsely accused of mutiny, and hanged after a drumhead trial for striking and killing his accuser. The exhibition highlights the composition, preservation, discovery, and ongoing transmission of a singular work of art – a “prose and poem concoction” – left unfinished on Melville’s desk at his death in 1891. Curated by Grolier Club member William Palmer Johnston from his extensive Melville Collection, the exhibition features more than 50 items, including multiple scholarly transcriptions of the Billy Budd manuscript, as well as illustrations, photographs, dust jackets, movie posters, the opera libretto, playbills, a commemorative stamp, unique fine bindings for limited editions, and artwork by Barry Moser. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue published by the Grolier Club and a symposium on Oct 9, 2024 that is being livestreamed.

FABS 19th Century Zoom Group
2024-10-17 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

The Sugar King of California
2024-10-21 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California

Claus Spreckels (1828–1908) emigrated from his homeland of Germany to the United States with only seventy-five cents in his pocket, built a sugar empire, and became one of the richest Americans in history alongside John D. Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. Migrating to San Francisco after the gold rush, Spreckels built the largest sugar beet factory of its kind in the United States. When Spreckels gave America its first sugar cube, he became the “Sugar King.”
A kingpin in the development of the Hawai‘i-California sugarcane industry, Spreckels wielded a clenched fist over Hawai‘i’s economy for nearly two decades after occupying a position of unrivaled power and political influence with the Hawaiian monarchy, while also advancing major technology developments on the islands. The Sugar King’s legacy continued as the Spreckels family developed large portions of California, building and breaking monopolies in agriculture, shipping, railroading, finance, real estate, horse breeding, utilities, streetcars, and water infrastructure, and building entire towns and cities from infrastructure to superstructure.
Harshly criticized by his enemies for ruthless business tactics but loved by his employees, Claus Spreckels was unapologetic in his quest for wealth, asserting “Spreckels’s success is California’s success.” But there’s always a cost for single-minded determination; the legendary family quarrels even included a murder charge. Spreckels’s biography is one of business triumph and tragedy, a portrait of a family torn apart by money, jealousy, and ego.
A virtual presentation by Sandra E. Bonura, author, lecturer, and historian

Register to attend the virtual presentation on Zoom

Virtual Lecture: How a Grolierite Shaped the Metropolitan Museum of Art
2024-10-21 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Dr. Jonathan Conlin talks about former Grolier Club librarian Henry Watson Kent’s role in shaping The Met into a great cultural institution.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-how-a-grolierite-shaped-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art-tickets-1027694851967?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
Join Grolier Club and Thomas J. Watson Library friends online as Dr. Jonathan Conlin gives a livestreamed talk called “‘An Archaic American’? How a Grolierite Helped Make the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Former Grolier Club librarian Henry Watson Kent (1866-1948) was an important figure behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s evolution into one of the world’s greatest cultural institutions. Dr. Jonathan Conlin, author of the newly-published book The Met: A History of a Museum and Its People (Columbia U. Press), will explore how Kent’s “Yankee” pedigree and previous experience at the Slater Memorial Museum (Norwich, CT) shaped his Met career between 1905-1940, particularly his role in creating the museum’s American Wing and Education Department. As John Cotton Dana of Newark Museum and Kent’s Met colleagues recognized, he was an innovator, but also “an archaic American” who occasionally appeared hidebound by tradition and deference to his trustees. (Kent is known as well for inventing the Grolier Club’s idiosyncratic library cataloging system.)
Jonathan Conlin is Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton. Born in New York, he studied History and Modern Languages at Oxford, before moving to the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Cambridge for his Masters and PhD. In 2006 he published the first history of the National Gallery (London), which he recently re-wrote as the Gallery’s official bicentenary history. In 2019 he published an award-winning biography of the art collector, oil magnate and philanthropist Calouste Gulbenkian, Mr Five Per Cent (Profile). His book The Met will be available for sale and signing at the lecture.

FABS Bindings Zoom: Renate Mesmer on the Folger Shakespeare Library
2024-10-21 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Oct 21, 2024. 7:30 Eastern time, 4:30 Pacific time
Renate Mesmer will talk about the Folger’s recent renovation and the challenges and improvements of such an undertaking.
Renate Mesmer, Conservator for the Folger Shakespeare Library will provide an overview of the preparations made for the Folger’s First Folios and other collections before, during, and after a multi-year renovation project. What do you do with a 300,000-item collection when new HVAC systems are installed, new storage shelving is added, and the exhibition space is tripled? After more than four years of closure and renovation, the Folger’s 82 First Folios are now on display for the first time.
To join the mailing list for this group, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

FABS Zoom: Living With Books
2024-10-22 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.
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.org

The Forgetters: Greg Sarris with Leslie Carol Roberts
2024-10-24 18:00 - 19:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California

Greg Sarris—tribal leader, scholar, teacher, and activist—has always kept stories, and storytelling, at the center of his ambitious life’s work. In his latest book, The Forgetters, he goes to the root of storytelling, in a loosely interwoven collection told by two “crow sisters” and inspired by creation myths of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples of Northern California. Called “incandescent” by Publishers Weekly, these are stories that feel both timeless and firmly grounded, both enduring and urgent. Joining Sarris in conversation is author, journalist, and professor Leslie Carol Roberts, founder of the ECOPOESIS Project.
An in-person and virtual conversation with Greg Sarris, tribal leader, scholar, teacher, and activist, and Leslie Carol Roberts, author, journalist, professor, and founder of the ECOPOESIS Project.
** Co-presented and co-hosted by LitQuake

Register to attend the virtual presentation on Zoom

Poisoned Palettes: Exploring the Deadly Beauty of Manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum
2024-10-24 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Baltimore Bibliophiles
Open to member of FABS Societies
Dear FABS Club members:
I hope many of you will be able to join us on Thursday, October 24, for “Poisoned Palettes: Exploring the Deadly Beauty of Manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum.” Our speakers are Lynley Herbert, Head of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Annette Ortiz, Conservation Scientist and Abigail Quandt, Head of Conservation, Books and Paper. Their presentation is a virtual introduction to a major upcoming exhibit at the Walters: If Books Could Kill (December 18, 2024-August 05, 2025.) If Books Could Kill casts light on the hidden dangers of manuscripts within the Walters’ rich collection and reveals the delicate science behind recognizing those toxic materials and handling them safely today. The program on October 24 will highlight the challenges facing these experts on a daily basis. And to have a closer look at those challenges, please visit the exhibit. The exhibit link is: https://thewalters.org/exhibitions/if-books-could-kill/
For the link to the October 24 ZOOM program contact Jennifer Larson info@fabsocieties.org

Belle da Costa Greene: A Transformative Librarian Through Her Letters
2024-10-28 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California

Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) was Pierpont Morgan’s personal librarian (1908–1913) and the first Director of the Morgan Library (1924–1948). She was also the daughter of two mixed-race parents and passed for white. In the nearly six hundred letters that Greene sent to art historian Bernard Berenson (1865–1959), author Deborah Parker identifies Greene’s energetic pursuit of exceptional opportunities, illuminating the artistry and imaginative features of Greene’s writing—her self-invention, her vibrant responses to books and art, and her pathbreaking work as a librarian. As Greene transformed a private library into a magnificent public institution, she also transformed herself: hers was a life both lived and writ large.
A virtual presentation by Deborah Parker, author and professor of Italian, University of Virginia

Register to attend the virtual presentation on Zoom

In Person: Words on Fire! Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Book Censorship
2024-11-02 10:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of Washington
Nov 02, 2024, 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM Pacific time
Seattle, 93 Pike St #307, Seattle, WA 98101, USA
Open to all and in-person, this provocative one-day program explores censorship from multiple perspectives. If you are alarmed by censorship and enjoy thought-provoking content, this is for you!
A one-day event sponsored by the Book Club of Washington and Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum, with additional support from The Kelmscott Bookshop.
Registration fees (collected via Credit Card or PayPal when you RSVP)
Book Club of Washington and Folio Members: $40
Non-Members: $55
Students: $15
To locate Folio in the Pike Place Market and see parking options: https://www.folioseattle.org/contact-us/
Register here:
https://www.bookclubofwashington.org/events-1/words-on-fire-historical-and-contemporary-perspectives-on-book-censorship-1

Deborah Parker on Becoming Belle da Costa Greene
2024-11-11 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
November Midday Program

Belle da Costa Greene was Pierpont Morgan’s personal librarian from 1908–1913 and from 1924–1948 the first Director of the Morgan Library. Though a striking and much written about figure, much of what is known about Greene derives from her more than 600 letters to art historian Bernard Berenson. While Greene’s letters to the connoisseur have proven invaluable to writers seeking to reconstruct the larger narrative of her life, the artistry of the letters and the way in which her writing creates a singular self, have gone unnoticed. Parker’s talk will examine Greene’s vivid account of her working life — how she managed her education, her vibrant responses to books, and some of her most signal accomplishments.
Deborah Parker is Professor of Italian at the University of Virginia. Her research expertise and teaching focus on Italian and Mediterranean visual and print cultures in the medieval and early modern eras. Her latest book, Becoming Belle da Costa Greene — A Visionary Librarian Through Her Letters is published by Villa I Tatti.
Register today!
November Midday Program

Belle da Costa Greene was Pierpont Morgan’s personal librarian from 1908–1913 and from 1924–1948 the first Director of the Morgan Library. Though a striking and much written about figure, much of what is known about Greene derives from her more than 600 letters to art historian Bernard Berenson. While Greene’s letters to the connoisseur have proven invaluable to writers seeking to reconstruct the larger narrative of her life, the artistry of the letters and the way in which her writing creates a singular self, have gone unnoticed. Parker’s talk will examine Greene’s vivid account of her working life — how she managed her education, her vibrant responses to books, and some of her most signal accomplishments.
Deborah Parker is Professor of Italian at the University of Virginia. Her research expertise and teaching focus on Italian and Mediterranean visual and print cultures in the medieval and early modern eras. Her latest book, Becoming Belle da Costa Greene — A Visionary Librarian Through Her Letters is published by Villa I Tatti.
Register today: https://caxtonclub.org/event-5901089
Preregistration required via website. Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.
Even if you can’t attend at the scheduled time, if you’re interested, please register. After the program, we’ll send an email to all registrants, asking if you’d like a link to the complete recording. That way you can see the program even if you couldn’t attend live, ran into technical issues, or simply wanted to watch it again.

The American War in Vietnam Through Manuscripts
2024-11-11 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Manuscript Society
Manuscript Mondays
The American War In Vietnam As Shown Through Manuscripts
Special Date: Monday, November 11, 2024
8:00PM Eastern
Free, Live Webinar
Six decades later, the American War in Vietnam remains a controversial and influential event. Stuart has been collecting the conflict for a quarter century now, building one of the most important archives in private hands. He owns letters by the great leaders of the war (Ho Chi Minh, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon); the American serviceman and servicewoman (diaries, letters home, photo albums) and the pro-war and anti-war movements (posters, bumper stickers, leaflets). Stuart will select about ten manuscripts from his collection and show how they illuminate the war and what they can teach us today.
Presenter: Stuart Lutz of Stuart Lutz Historical Documents, Inc.
Stuart Lutz has been in the historic document and manuscript field for over thirty years. During that time, he has sold the autographs and letters of all the Presidents, prominent Civil War and Revolutionary War figures, and Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Plus he has sold items from famous authors, well-known businessmen, important aviators and scientists, distinguished African-Americans and notable women. He also specializes in correspondence with outstanding content penned by ordinary people. These include a letter written from the Oregon Trail, Civil War battle letters written by soldiers, or a letter written from Honolulu after Pearl Harbor.
Stuart is a member of the Professional Autograph Dealers Association, the Manuscript Society, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, and the Ephemera Society. He is a Certified Member of the Appraisers Association of America, qualified in Historic Documents. He was the subject of a Time magazine article on his appraisal of their extensive archives.

REGISTER: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/5917271160783/WN_Y4wuQwL7S3mDLVhD4cnXAA
(You will receive an email confirmation of your registration)

Reid Byers on Imaginary Books
2024-11-13 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Baxter Society
Open to members of FABS Societies: contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org to receive a link.
Reid Byers, the President of the Baxter Society, is the author of The Private Library, listed among the best non-fiction books of 2021 by the Washington Post. At our November meeting, he will speak on his upcoming book and exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York, Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books. The meeting will be held at 7:00 pm on November 13, at Glickman Library in Portland, and on Zoom.
The New York Times said:
This irresistible conceptual-art installation displays meticulously constructed simulacra of books that don’t exist — some because they’ve been lost, others because they never did exist. Look for “Love’s Labour’s Won,” Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, and the “Necronomicon.” (Dec. 5-Feb. 15, 2025; Grolier Club) – Will Heinrich, NY Times, Sept 6, 2024.

Riding Like The Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb
2024-11-18 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
In 1939, when John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation’s collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In Riding Like the Wind, renowned biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle revives the groundbreaking voice of Sanora Babb.
Dunkle follows Babb from her impoverished childhood in eastern Colorado to California. There, she befriended the era’s literati, including Ray Bradbury and Ralph Ellison; entered into an illegal marriage; and was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was Babb’s field notes and oral histories of migrant farmworkers that Steinbeck relied on to write his novel. But this is not merely a saga of literary usurping; on her own merits, Babb’s impact was profound. Her life and work feature heavily in Ken Burns’s award-winning documentary The Dust Bowl and inspired Kristin Hannah in her bestseller The Four Winds. Riding Like the Wind reminds us with fresh awareness that the stories we know—and who tells them—can change the way we remember history.
An in-person and virtual presentation by Iris Jamahl Dunkle, author
Register here: https://www.bccbooks.org/event/riding-like-the-wind-the-life-of-sanora-babb-2/

FABS Bindings Zoom: Richard Minsky on his Bindings 1968-Present
2024-11-18 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Nov 18, 2024. 7:30 pm Eastern time, 4:30pm Pacific
Richard Minsky will draw upon his exhibition Material Meets Metaphor and talk about choosing binding materials that evoke the metaphor of the text. It will feature images of Richard Minsky’s bindings showing how they began and evolved from 1968 to the present. He will be glad to answer questions about concepts and techniques. You can see many of the bindings here.
To join the mailing list for this group contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Robert McCracken Peck on Botanically Illustrated Books
2024-11-19 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join the Grolier Club for a live webcast as former Grolierite, Robert McCracken Peck, who is Curator of Art and Senior Fellow at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, lectures on books about the natural world from the 18th and 19th centuries that defied expectations by replicating nature in a tangible way.
The volumes incorporated the organisms themselves into their pages, or, in the case of trees, used the very subjects being discussed to create the books describing them. In what we think of as the “Golden Age” of natural history publications, John James Audubon and James Bateman took their volumes to extremes in size, while Maria Sibylla Merian, Mark Catesby, Pierre Joseph Redoute, Joseph Bloch, John Gould and other naturalist-artists bedazzled contemporaries with illustrations that are still referenced by scientists and sought after by collectors. These publications’ goal was to record and disseminate information about plants and wildlife, and to provide “lifelike” illustrations of flora and fauna.
In this heavily illustrated lecture, Peck will discuss a different approach to scientific illustration: how natural history specimens were used to illustrate themselves in three dimensions in exsiccatae, xylotheks, and lepidochromes. He will also discuss books illustrated with feathers. You won’t want to miss this unusual – and beautiful – presentation about a little-known aspect of scientific book production.
Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-robert-mccracken-peck-on-botanically-illustrated-books-tickets-1044425263077?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

Conversation with David M. Rubenstein on Abraham Lincoln
2024-11-22 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join the Grolier Club online for a livestreamed conversation with David M. Rubenstein about the public exhibition Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print, which runs until December 28, 2024, in our ground-floor Exhibition Hall.
Note: This is a live webcast. Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lincoln-exhibition-event-conversation-with-david-m-rubenstein-tickets-1044322214857?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite
If you wish to register instead for the in-person event, please visit this page.
In many ways, books made Abraham Lincoln. He became a lawyer through self-disciplined study, won the White House through the concurrent rise of American popular publishing, and remains one of the most written about figures over the 160 years since his death. Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print uses original printings of books and ephemera to create a sweeping, conceptual portrait of the man. The exhibition features important editions of Lincoln’s greatest accomplishments, including the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the Cooper Union Speech, his debates with Stephen A. Douglass, and many others. More than 150 objects describe the life of Lincoln as he was born in the American West, captivated by literature, shaped by the portentous 1850s, tested by the American Civil War, responsible for the end of slavery, and murdered and mourned at the age of 56. Featuring materials from the David M. Rubenstein Americana Collection, the exhibition is curated by Mazy Boroujerdi, special advisor to the collection, and will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the Grolier Club.
David M. Rubenstein is co-founder and co-chairman of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group and is the principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. His published books include The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency (2024) and The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians (2019). His philanthropic activities have assisted the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Arlington House, and the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima). His collection has included the Bay Psalm Book (1640, the first book printed in America) and the Magna Carta (1297, one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy).
Visit the exhibition online and view case images on Flickr.
Photo Credit: Cover of Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print (Grolier Club, from Marquand Books). Cover design by Ryan Polich.

FABS Zoom: Living With Books
2024-11-26 19:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Fourth Tuesday of the month, 4:00-5:30pm Pacific/7:00-8:30pm Eastern
Join the Zoom group that meets monthly to discuss the pleasures and challenges of home libraries. This month’s topics are “bad” home libraries and sound/silence/music in libraries.
To be added to the mailing list please contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Caxton Printers of Idaho: A Century of Publishing in the American West
2024-12-02 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
James H. Gipson founded Caxton Printers as a small print shop in rural Idaho over a century ago. During the following decades, Caxton grew to publish hundreds of books across all genres––primarily about the American West. Gipson’s philosophy was to help writers from the West get published, regardless of the commercial success of their books. Learn how a tiny publisher in Idaho survived and competed with larger firms and made an impact on the history of the American West/California.
An in-person and virtual presentation by Alessandro Meregaglia, archivist, librarian, historian, and associate professor, Boise State University, Idaho
Register here: https://www.bccbooks.org/event/caxton-printers-of-idaho-a-century-of-publishing-in-the-american-west/
** The Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Lecture on the History of the Book Trade in California and the West **

Andrew Hui on Renaissance Libraries
2024-12-03 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join the Grolier Club as Andrew Hui, associate professor of humanities at Yale-NUS College, Singapore, will lecture on his new book, The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (Princeton), which reveals how the Renaissance studiolo (“little studio”), space dedicated to self-cultivation, became both balm and poison for the soul.
Prof. Hui, an insatiable bookworm himself, has combed literary and visual works to trace how humanists from Petrarch to Machiavelli to Montaigne created their own intimate studies. He looks at imaginary libraries in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, and discusses how Renaissance painters depicted saints as bibliophiles. Yet writers of the period also saw a dark side to solitary reading. It drove Don Quixote to madness, Prospero to exile, and Faustus to perdition. Hui draws parallels with our own age of information surplus and charts the studiolo’s influence on bibliographic fabulists like Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.
The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries will be available for sale and signing at this event.
Hui’s previous books include A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter (Princeton, 2019) and The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature (Fordham, 2016).
Note: This is a live webcast. Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-andrew-hui-on-renaissance-libraries-tickets-1044522443747?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite

Gwendolyn Brooks and the Formation of the Black Literary Canon
2024-12-05 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
December Midday Program
Presented by the Caxton Club and Chicago Collections Consortium

August 24, 1949: Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks is published. It is her second volume of poetry, and readers admire and struggle with its technical forms, its atomizations, and critiques of racial life in Black America. At the book’s center is a forty-three-stanza poem called “The Anniad” in which Brooks’s titular heroine comes of age in epic verse, followed immediately by an “Appendix” of “leaves from a loose-leaf war diary.”
May 1, 1950: Annie Allen wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The book has never been reprinted. Until now.
Join us as Caxtonian Cait Coker explores Gwendolyn Brooks’s literary legacy and her place in American letters – and the exhibition currently on display at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign – on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Annie Allen.
Cait Coker is Associate Professor and Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A scholar who focuses on the intersections of gender, genre, and publishing history, she is also Co-Editor of the Women in Book History Bibliography at womensbookhistory.org.
Register today: https://caxtonclub.org/event-5951521/Registration
Book purchase Registering for the program will allow you the opportunity to purchase copies of the seventy-fifth anniversary edition of Annie Allen for $32, including tax and shipping.
Preregistration required via website. Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Please forward this notice to anyone who may find it of interest.

FABS Handpress Era Zoom Group
2024-12-10 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Join us this month as Dr. Gene Flamm discusses some variations among the incunable editions of the first illustrated work on anatomy – Ketham’s Fasciculus medicinae, 1491-1500.
To get on the mailing list for this group and receive links, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Allie Alvis on Weird and Wonderful Treasures in the Winterthur Library
2024-12-13 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
December Midday Program

A recent Caxton Club program unfolded like an English country house mystery: The Case of the Poison Pigments, in which the Winterthur Library played a vital detecting role. New to Inspector Winterthur?
Well, imagine a 175-room house nestled into a remarkable thousand-acre estate. It was brought to life by H.F. du Pont, whose vision was for “a bastion of decorative arts connoisseurship in America.”
The formal garden encompasses sixty acres. Ninety thousand objects populate the museum. And the library? It features a stunning collection of more than a million items relating to American decorative art. The library offers a premier assortment of materials relating to American decorative art in a global and social context. It illuminates the lives of everyday Americans through a range of materials, including ephemera, pattern books, trade catalogs, and so much more.
No private plane waiting to jet you to Delaware? No worries. Annie Alvis, Curator of Special Collections at the Winterthur will come to us, with a fast paced, lavishly illuminated talk that reveals the history, highlights, and wonderfully weird treasures of the Winterthur Library.
A Smithsonian Library veteran, Alvis has earned degrees in book history and information management at two different universities in Scotland … where they quickly realized that they weren’t in Kansas anymore.
You can enjoy this program from the comfort of your very own Zoom Room. Or … you can gather with other Caxtonians at the Union League Club for a showing on a big screen with a plenty loud sound system. Then you can adjourn to a great big room with a really high ceiling and pillars and a working (but not really) fireplace for a lavish holiday buffet. As you navigate the tables groaning with delectable delights, you can engage your luncheon companions about the proper pronunciation of Winterthur and maybe hear from carolers (whose wide Dickensian skirts do not conceal those startling children from the end of … well, you know.)
Register today! https://caxtonclub.org/event-5903258?CalendarViewType=1&SelectedDate=12/12/2024
Zoom presentation is free and open to all.
Zoom begins at 12:00PM CT/1:00 PM ET. Preregistration required via website.

Abraham Lincoln Virtual Exhibition Tour
2024-12-19 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join the Grolier Club for a video tour of the exhibition “Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print” with curator Mazy Boroujerdi, followed by live online Q&A.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-exhibition-tour-qa-abraham-lincoln-his-life-in-print-tickets-1044332595907?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

FABS 19th Century Zoom Group
2024-12-29 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Join this congenial group for conversation on all things bookish and 19th century!
For announcement and links to the monthly meetings, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

FABS Handpress Era Zoom Group: John Windle on Pochoir Technique
2025-01-06 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The Handpress Era Zoom group is hosting a talk by bookseller and William Blake expert John Windle, who will discuss the pochoir technique used at the Trianon Press to create extraordinary facsimiles of works by Blake and others. Join us!
Contact Jennifer: info@fabsocieties.org
