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=dWZZNFZoR1VRTTJuckdJYXgxakxndz09

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.

Home Library Audits and Lending Books: FABS Living With Books Zoom Group
2024-06-25 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The Living With Books group meets via Zoom on the fourth Tuesday of the month for convivial chat about home libraries. This month’s topics are Book Audits and Lending Books, with The Bedside Table if time permits.
To join the list, contact Jennifer at info@fabsocieties.org

Lynda Mugglestone on Samuel Johnson’s Garret Lexicography
2024-06-26 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join The Grolier Club for a live webcast lecture by Lynda Mugglestone, Professor of the History of English and Tutorial Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford, in conjunction with our public exhibition “Hardly Harmless Drudgery,” co-curated by Grolier members Bryan A. Garner and Jack Lynch. This registration is for the live webcast: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-lynda-mugglestone-on-samuel-johnsons-garret-lexicography-tickets-916652431097?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
Professor Mugglestone, author of “The Oxford History of English” [Oxford University Press, 2006], in her research focuses on a wide range of linguistic, social and cultural aspects in the history of English (from about 1750 on). She has particular interests in the history of pronunciation and of dictionaries, and has written a number of books and articles on lexicography between 1700 and the present, including “Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words,” and earlier books on Dr. Johnson and on the Oxford English Dictionary.
“Hardly Harmless Drudgery” displays English-language dictionaries from the dawn of printing to the present day.
Dictionaries are repositories of erudition, monuments to linguistic authority, and battlefields in cultural and political struggles. They are works of almost superhuman endurance, produced by people who devote themselves for years or even decades to wearisome labor. Dictionaries can become commodities in a fiercely competitive publishing business, and they can keep a business afloat for generations or sink it swiftly. They are also often beautiful objects: typographically innovative, designed to project learning and authority. The painstaking work of corralling, recording, and defining the vocabulary of a language has inspired best-selling books, both fiction and nonfiction, and even two major motion pictures. And yet its future is uncertain. The internet has taught more than one industry that it’s hard to compete with free, and the reign of the printed dictionary may be coming to an end. It leaves many to wonder: are professionally edited dictionaries necessary anymore?–and if they’re necessary, are they possible?
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.

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
