• Elizabeth Bradley on Washington Irving

    Sponsored by The Caxton Club Halloween approaches. It’s Friday the 13th. The path to the Caxton meeting is illuminated by the faint glow of a Zoom screen. And are those the sounds of hoofbeats approaching from behind? Could it be a hurrying Hessian? With all of that, not even Van Winkle could nod off as […]

  • Hannah Batsel and Leslie Winter on Caxton Women Collect

    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 […]

  • Jill Gage on Artists’ Books at the Newberry

    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. […]

  • Aaron Pratt on Shakespeare and Spencer, Secondhand

    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 […]

  • Julie Park: Containing the Self in Eighteenth-Century Pocket Diaries

    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 […]

  • Julie Park: Containing the Self in Eighteenth-Century Pocket Diaries

    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" […]

  • Nora Davies on Crymes and Rhymes: The Broadside Ballad and the Celebrity Criminal

    Sponsored by The Caxton Club When/Where: FRI 9/13/2024 12:00PM CT/1:00PM ET. Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Preregistration required via website. ULCC live attendance–Zoom presentation and optional lunch ($35) following. Reservations required by 12PM CT 9/11/24. Seating limit is 24. Would you like to attend? Click here to register. EVENT DETAILS: September Midday Program […]

  • Ann Lindsey on Poisonous Pigments in Books

    Sponsored by The Caxton Club October Evening Program It is well known that copper arsenic compounds were used as a green pigment in textiles and home furnishings during the 19th century. In 2019, Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, embarked on a study of green cloth covered bindings from the 19th century and continues […]

  • Deborah Parker on Becoming Belle da Costa Greene

    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. […]

  • Gwendolyn Brooks and the Formation of the Black Literary Canon

    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 […]

  • Allie Alvis on Weird and Wonderful Treasures in the Winterthur Library

    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 […]