Bibliophiles Beware: The Situationist International and the Art & Politics of Cultural Hijacking
2024-03-04 18:00 - 19:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
Active between 1957 and 1972, The Situationist International (S.I.) was a revolutionary alliance of artists, intellectuals, architects and political theorists that is hailed as the “last avant-garde” of the 20th century. One of the organization’s core concepts is that of détournement, which can be understood as the subversion of established cultural commodities as a means of propaganda. This exhibition presents numerous examples of this innovative practice, from artist books to comic strips, and from leaflets to maps. In doing so, it also attempts to retrace the history of a movement that maintained an ambiguous relationship with their own material productions.
Exhibition opening and remarks by Mehdi El Hajoui, private collector.
Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Bdg05B1aTZmhCHk5sBIUzQ#/registration

Photography Collections That Bring History to Life — Lorenzo Lorain and Images of the Oregon Coast, 1857–1861
2024-03-08 12:00 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
Lieutenant Lorenzo Lorain is remembered in part by some historians as the first officer from Oregon to be wounded in the Civil War. But we’ll be learning about another, unique first. Lorain undertook to photograph Native peoples who lived along the Oregon coast. The images he made between 1857 and 1861 provide a remarkable record of Coos, Lowe, Umpqua, Siuslaw, Modoc, and Klamath individuals — a record that helps bring vital history to life. Photographic collections are carefully nurtured in libraries, museums, and historical societies. Our speaker, Megan Friedel, will reach behind the exhibit glass we usually have to peer through to show and tell a remarkable tale.
Friedel serves as Head of Collections Management and Stewardship for Rare & Distinctive Collections at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She is also an Assistant Professor and oversees the library’s archival collections. She will be drawing on her research into the photographic history of the 19th Century of the American West.
She was graduated from Amherst College and earned dual degrees at Simmons College, taking an MA in history and an MLIS.
No need to get on a plane to leave the plains and journey west. Book your reservation today!
Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Register here: https://caxtonclub.org/event-5615361
Zoom begins at 12:00PM CT/1:00 PM ET. Preregistration required via website.

Empress San Francisco: The Pacific Rim, The Great West, and California at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition
2024-03-11 18:00 - 19:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
When the more than 18 million visitors poured into the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) in San Francisco in 1915, they encountered a vision of the world born out of San Francisco’s particular local political and social climate. By seeking to please various constituent groups ranging from the government of Japan to local labor unions and neighborhood associations, fair organizers generated heated debate and conflict about who and what represented San Francisco, California, and the United States at the world’s fair. The PPIE encapsulated the social and political tensions and conflicts of pre–World War I California and presaged the emergence of San Francisco as a cosmopolitan cultural and economic center of the Pacific Rim.
Empress San Francisco offers a fresh examination of this, one of the largest and most influential world’s fairs, by considering the local social and political climate of Progressive Era San Francisco. Focusing on the influence exerted by women, Asians and Asian Americans, and working-class labor unions, among others, Abigail M. Markwyn offers a unique analysis both of this world’s fair and the social construction of pre–World War I America and the West.
An in-person and virtual presentation by Abigail M. Markwyn, author and professor of history at Carroll University

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Handpress Era Zoom Group
2024-03-11 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
All are welcome to join us for an hour of presentations and discussion of printed books and other materials before 1800. The Handpress Group meets the second Monday of each month. In honor of Women’s History Month, the March session features Elizabeth Canning discussing A Narrative of the Life of Charlotte Charke (1755), the first autobiography in English by a gender non-conforming person. (Charke was an actress and author who not only performed male “breeches” roles onstage, but also lived and worked as “Mr. Brown” offstage for many years.) The presentation will be followed by an open session in which attendees are invited to hold up a book authored, owned/read, crafted or published by a woman.
Contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org) to be added to the mailing list.

Miniature Commissioned Bookbindings with Arno Gschwendtner and Pat Pistner
2024-03-17 11:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Miniature Book Society
The Miniature Book Society presents the next in their zoom series on March 17 at 8am PST, 11am EST. Members Pat Pistner and Dr. Arno Gschwendtner will be talking about commissioned book bindings and will showcase examples from their personal collections. The talk is open to MBS members, but interested FABS members may contact President Kim Herrick for participation info: books@thebooklair.com

Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California
2024-03-18 18:00 - 19:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Sponsored by The Book Club of California
An essential piece in California Studies, Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California offers the first critical engagement with the vision of California’s most ambitious interpreter. While Starr’s multifaceted and polymathic vision of California offered a unique gaze—synthesizing central features, big themes, and incredible problems with the propitious golden dream—his eight-volume California Dream series, along with several other books and thousands of published articles and essays, often puzzled historians and other scholars. Historians in the contemporary school of critical historiography often found Starr’s narrative approach—seeking to tell the internal drama of the California story—to be less attuned to the most important work happening in the field. Such a perspective fails to acknowledge key developments in historical subfields like Black and African American Studies, Chicana/o/x Studies, Asian Studies, Native Studies, and others that draw from the narrative in their critical work and how this relates to Starr’s contribution. Along with being a major figure in California institutional life, with literary output spanning genres, it is through the lens of his lived experience as a devout Catholic that this critical sociological perspective sheds new light on his project. With contributions from sociology, history, and theology, akin to investigations appearing in Theology and California: Theological Refractions on California’s Culture (Routledge), Redemptive Dreams offers interdisciplinary perspectives that highlight key features inherent in interdisciplinary theological reflection on place and illuminates these diverse disciplinary discourses as they appear in Starr’s articulation of the California Dream.
An in-person and virtual presentation by Jason S. Sexton, author and professor of sociology at University of California, Los Angeles
Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TSwVvno7RzadtEKwt1Waew#/registration

FABS Bindings Zoom Group: Brian Beidler on Making Finishing Tools
2024-03-18 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The FABS Bindings Zoom Group is a lively group of book artisans, curators and collectors who meet the third Monday of the month to discuss aspects of book binding from all periods. All are welcome to participate!
This month we feature Brian Beidler on “Making the Tools of the Trade,” the manufacture of finishing tools and how they are used on bindings.
Contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org) to join the mailing list and receive links.

Hannah Batsel and Leslie Winter on Caxton Women Collect
2024-03-20 18:30 (America/Chicago)
Sponsored by The Caxton Club
March Evening Program

Hannah Batsel
“A Library of Images: An Artist and Illustrator’s Handbibliothek.”
While the subject matter of Hannah’s collection varies widely, every volume serves the same purpose: a reference tool to lend detail and verisimilitudes to the books she creates. In addition to books about art and illustration, her collection includes books on the niche subject matter that her projects require: late-nineteenth-century boys’ adventure stories, publisher bindings, books about illuminated manuscripts, and occult grimoires. Her collection explains why she has often said, “All of my best ideas are in other peoples’ books.”
Hannah is a book artist, writer, and illustrator based in Chicago. Click here to learn more.
Leslie Winter
“Solutions to Accumulating: Mental Collecting.”
Leslie Winter’s presentation is based on the premise that Millennials will experience lower rates of homeownership and change residences far more frequently than previous generations. Assuming that such predictions are correct, she outlines a method of book collecting that combines limited and strategic physical acquisition with a creative “wishful thinking” practice which she calls “mental collecting.”
What she describes may indeed predict far more typical collecting habits of future Caxtonians than the Club’s founding members could ever have imagined when they first gathered in the winter of 1895.
Leslie is an Associate Specialist in Books and Manuscripts at Freeman’s | Hindman in Chicago. Click here to learn more.
Zoom begins at 6:30 PM CT/7:30 PM ET.
Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Register here: https://caxtonclub.org/event-5605501

FABS 19th Century Group
2024-03-21 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
The FABS 19th Century SIG is a lively group of readers, writers, collectors and curators who meet online the third Thursday of the month to discuss all things bookish and 19th century. All are welcome to participate.
To join the mailing list contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org)

Leslie Long on Book Designer Margaret Neilson Armstrong
2024-03-22 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by the Baltimore Bibliophiles
On Thursday, March 22nd, we will welcome Leslie Long, who works in the General Collections Conservation Section at the Library of Congress. Tying in with Women’s History Month, Leselie will introduce us to Margaret Neilson Armstrong, a 19th and early 20th-century American book cover designer, illustrator, and author. She is best known for her book covers influenced by Art Nouveau. [Wikipedia] The virtual program begins at 7:00 pm EDT.
For a link contact:
Binnie Syril Braunstein
The Baltimore Bibliophiles
BSBGC@AOL.com

FABS Living With Books Zoom Group
2024-03-26 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
Hosted by The Private Library author Reid Byers, this group meets on Zoom, on the fourth Tuesday of each month. Discussions will cover acquisition, cataloging and photographing collections, home libraries, book furniture, conservation and storage, and much more. All are welcome to participate.
THIS MONTH’S TOPICS: triage of books that need repair; lighting in libraries
To receive links and announcements, contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org)

Diaries & Letters From the Virginia Women Writers Archive
2024-04-01 20:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Manuscript Society
Manuscript Mondays – Free, Live Webinar
Monday, April 1, 2024
8:00 pm Eastern Daylight time
Join Jay Gaidmore – From the Special Collections Research Center, at the Earl Gregg Swem Library (College of William & Mary)
When most people hear of a writer’s archives, they think of books and authors. But not the Virginia Women Writers Archive at the Special Collections Research Center in the Earl Gregg Swem Library (College of William & Mary). This archive also collects diaries, letters, memory books, and other unpublished materials written by women who were born or lived, worked, taught, or studied in Virginia. While a majority of the collection is from the 20th Century, there are letters and diaries from as early as 1847, and annotated books as early as 1851. Jay Gaidmore will share many examples from the collection, while discussing the genesis of this archive plus the collection development plan for the future.
Q&A follows the presentation

Gerald “Jay” Gaidmore

Presenter:
Jay Gaidmore has served as the Marian and Alan McLeod Director of the Special Collections Research Center at William & Mary Libraries since July 2013. He has twenty-five years of experience as an archivist and special collections librarian, having worked in various positions at the Library of Virginia, Brown University, and UNC-Chapel Hill. He has an M.A. in History from Old Dominion University and a Master of Library and Information Sciences from the University of South Carolina-Columbia. From 2015-2021, he was a member of the Virginia State Historical Records Advisory Board, and currently serves as the president of the Williamsburg Historic Records Association and Trustee of The Manuscript Society.”
To Register:https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QxCF3uYXRbelPUZj5apjaQ

Sarah Deutsch: California and Reframing the Making of a Modern U.S. West
2024-04-08 17:00 - 18:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
A central theme of Making a Modern U.S. West by Sarah Deutsch is the question of what would constitute a modern U.S. and whose vision would define the West and the nation. Modernity for some meant corporate consolidation, capital intensive agriculture, white supremacy, male-headed families and private individual land-holding. For others, modernity could include racial mixing, transnational mobility, economic democracy, and collective ownership of land. Californians ran the full spectrum of these ideas—they fought over redwoods and irrigation, they speculated on land and oil, they fought over the border and who belonged on which side, and even over who should get a say in all those things—and in doing so, they helped define modernity for the region and the nation.
This presentation will address some of those issues as well as how the author tried to corral these unwieldy decades into a single volume.
A virtual presentation by Sarah Deutsch, author and professor of history, Duke University

Click here to REGISTER for the Virtual Presentation on Zoom

FABS Handpress Era Zoom Group: Color Plates of Fishes and Gilbert White's Natural History
2024-04-08 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by FABS
All are welcome to join us for an hour of presentations and discussion of printed books and other materials before 1800. The Handpress Group meets the second Monday of each month.
Justin Hanisch, New evidence for an old book: errant ink markings and an updated census provide new clues to the printing history of Louis Renard’s Poissons, ecrevisses, et crabes
Louis Renard’s Poissons, ecrevisses, et crabes (1719, 1754, 1782) is one of the earliest books on fishes published with coloured plates. Each of the three editions was issued by a different publisher but was printed from the same set of copperplates. In this talk, I will first summarize the interesting (and somewhat complicated) publishing history of this important book. I will then detail my efforts to gather as many leaves as possible from a broken and dispersed uncoloured copy that “shouldn’t exist” and how this copy inspired new bibliographical discoveries.
Justin Hanisch is an ecologist and collector of pre-20th century books, manuscripts, and ephemera on the natural and social history of fishes. He has published works on books and book collecting with the University of Alberta Press, Brill, and the journal Amphora and is currently preparing a manuscript based on the talk presented here today. He is a member of the Grolier Club and the Alcuin Society.
J. David Archibald, A Biologically Influential Publishing Quirk
The Oxford educated Gilbert White (1720-1793) became curate for life in the small village of Selborne, Hampshire. He was a keen observer of all the local fauna and flora describing occurrences of new species, behaviors of birds and mammals, and recording seasonal changes in plants and animals. Although limited to Selborne, his work is credited as being some of the earliest attempts at ecological and phenological observations. The 1789 book of his observations The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne was much loved, including by a ten-year-old Charles Darwin, it is a publishing quirk. It is supposedly the fourth-most published book in the English language after the Bible, Shakespeare, and Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.
J. David Archibald served on the faculty of Yale University and is professor emeritus of biology at San Diego State University. His field of research was the early evolutionary history of mammals, conducting many paleontological expeditions In the western U.S. and Asia. After becoming professor emeritus he turned to the history of evolutionary thought, especially pertaining to Charles Darwin. He is the author or coeditor of many scientific articles and books, including four books since his retirement, most recently in late 2021 Charles Darwin in the Reaktion Press Critical Lives series.
Contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org) to be added to the mailing list.

Virtual Exhibition Tour: Judging a Book by its Cover
2024-04-10 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York)
Sponsored by The Grolier Club
Join Curator George Fletcher for a pre-recorded video walkthrough of “Judging a Book by Its Cover,” an exhibition on bindings at the Grolier Club, followed by a live Q&A with Fletcher.
To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-exhibition-tour-judging-a-book-by-its-cover-tickets-863818683937?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

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
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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
