Illustration for "A Child's Christmas in Wales" by Peter Bailey (2014)

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: “It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.”

-from Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales (1952)

Here is the news from FABS for December:

The Manuscript Society announces a trip to Cambridge and Oxford, open to members of FABS societies. Stops include the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge; Samuel Pepys’s library with his famous diary; the Bodleian (with a private tour); Duke Humfry’s Library, Merton’s special collections, country houses galore, and much, much more! September 10-18 with London add-on September 18-21. Questions? Contact Shirley Sands, Executive Director, sands@manuscript.org

Here's our list of December bookish events from FABS member societies: free and open to the public 

Dec 2: 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. Learn more about Gipson's story with archivist Alessandro Meregaglia (The Book Club of California)

Dec 3: 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. (The Grolier Club)

Dec 5: Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, is the subject of Cait Coker’s upcoming presentation. Coker will discuss Brooks’ literary legacy, 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. (The Caxton Club)

Dec 10: Join the FABS Handpress Era Zoom Group from 7:30-8:30pm EST for a presentation by noted neurosurgeon and collector Dr. Eugene Flamm. He will discuss variations among the incunable editions of the first illustrated work on anatomy – Ketham's Fasciculus medicinae, 1491-1500. To join the mailing list contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Dec 13: Winterthur Curator of Special Collections Allie Alvis will introduce us to the Weird and Wonderful Treasures at Winterthur Library in Delaware. 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. (The Caxton Club)

Dec 17: The FABS Living With Books Zoom Group will meet early this month due to the holiday. Living With Books, hosted by The Private Library author Reid Byers, is a group devoted to the pleasures and challenges of home libraries. We meet at 7:00pm EST. For announcements and links to the monthly meetings, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Dec 19: As part of the current exhibition at the Grolier Club, you can attend a virtual tour of “Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print,” led by curator Mazy Boroujerdi. Afterward, there will be a live Q&A. (The Grolier Club)

Dec 29: The FABS 19^th Century Zoom Group meets monthly at 7:30pm EST for congenial conversation on all things bookish and 19^th century. You are welcome to join us! For announcements and links to the monthly meetings, contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

Sneak Peek at January:

Jan 11: Grolierite Curator Reid Byers gives an exhibition-related talk on “Collecting the Imaginary (in which all will be revealed).” Part bibliophilic entertainment and part conceptual art installation, “Imaginary Books: Lost, Unwritten, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books” features a collection of books that do not really exist. You won’t want to miss this one! (The Grolier Club)

Stay tuned to the FABS Calendar, as more events are sure to be posted soon.

Contact: Jennifer Larson, info@fabsocieties.org