Joie du Livre: FABS Newsletter for September 2024

 

Cover of the first edition of Darconville's Cat: A Novel by Alexander Theroux, with a self-portrait by the author.

“September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.”

― Alexander Theroux, Darconville’s Cat

“A literary game of the Nabokovian kind,” “a potpourri of language, a torrent of verbalism, a feast of vocabularies,” a book of “obvious excess,” “a largely ignored masterpiece.” So say the critics of Darconville’s Cat by Alexander Theroux. I don’t know about you but I’m willing to try any book that includes the word “groutnolls.” Also, Anthony Burgess loved it.

Here is the news from FABS for September. 

 

The Baltimore Bibliophiles are celebrating their 70th anniversary with a new website and a gala in November. Congratulations to a long-lived club, and may there be many happy returns of the day! While we are on the subject of Baltimore, check out Baltimore: A Booklover’s Dream for the homes of Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H. L. Mencken and Gertrude Stein (now museums), the row houses constructed by Frederick Douglass, iconic independent bookstores and the majestic Peabody Library in Mount Vernon.

 

Interior of the Peabody Library in Mt. Vernon. Click here for source

On September 22, The Book Club of Washington will present its Emory Award to Tanya Patton, Elise Severe, and Deb Fortner from Dayton, Washington for their leadership in saving the Dayton Memorial Library in Columbia County, Washington. Without their actions, Dayton could have become the first library in the US to be shut down because of book challenges. FABS members are invited to the celebration.

Also, The Book Club of Washington's highly-regarded journal is now online! Browse the archive of more than 300 articles and learn about the bookselling scene in 1970s Seattle, the marvels of the Howard Iron Works Printing Museum, or the collecting adventures of a mid-20th century timber tycoon! Here is more about the archive and BCW's project getting it online.

The American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers announces the winner of the 2024 "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Bookplate Competition, Frank Ivo Van Damme from Belgium. The theme for the 2025 competition is "Ossi di Seppia" or "Cuttlefish Bones" by Italian Nobel Laureate Eugenio Montale (1896-1981). For more information, visit bookplate.org. ASBC&D is about to participate in the global FISAE Congress on ex-libris in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The weeklong meeting will include exhibitions, talks, receptions, banquets, and tours. Interested? Contact ASBC&D President James Keenan (bookplate.org@gmail.com).

In Memoriam

We mourn the passing in August of one of the founders of FABS, Robert H. Jackson of Cleveland, Ohio. A member of the Grolier Club and the Rowfant Club, Jackson was a mainstay of many Cleveland cultural institutions, and a dedicated bibliophile. He served on the editorial advisory board of Biblio magazine, on Brown University's Rare Book Committee and the board of the Newberry Library of Chicago. He and his wife Donna left an endowment to the Kelvin Smith Library of Case Western Reserve University to support special collections.

 

FABS Annual Meeting, April 15, 1999 at the Grolier Club. Left to right: Larry Siegler, Mary Schlosser, Steven Rothman, John McClatchey, Arthur Cheslock, Eric Holzenberg, Jerry Cole, Mark Samuels Lasner, Scott Vile, Carol Grossman, Bruce McKittrick, Florence Shay, Robert H. Jackson.

Another longtime FABS supporter, George Singer of Burlington VT, passed away in March at the age of 94. George was a member of The Grolier Club and served as their FABS Trustee, as well as participating in many FABS tours. We are grateful for his contributions to this organization.

Requiescant in pace.

FABS Blogging

If you missed last month's blog posts, do have a look at  Nadeem Toodayan's essay on his collection of Osleriana, the history of medicine and medical biographies.

You may also enjoy this report from The Book Club of Detroit: Dr. Kristy Spann on the importance of children's literature, with examples from her collection of Newbery Medal winners.

Any news to report from your bibliophilic society? Drop me (Jennifer) a line at info@fabsocieties.org.

FABS Member Society Online/Virtual Events for this month: Free and Open to the Public 

 

It's time for Manuscript Monday! Dr. Ian S. MacLaren will speak about artist Paul Kane (1810–1871), who traveled by canoe and boat from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean in the mid-1840s. His aim was to sketch Native Americans in Wisconsin and Oregon territories and in lands controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company. An uneducated artist, Kane wrote in inimitable spelling both field notes and portrait and landscape logs. (The Manuscript Society, Sept 9).

The FABS Handpress Group will host a presentation by John Bidwell, Curator Emeritus at the Morgan Library & Museum. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie was a bestseller during the Romantic era. One of its bibliographers counted 269 editions published between 1789 and 1962. Bidwell will describe the 1795 first edition of the English translation by Helen Maria Williams, a book that has stumped the bibliographers because it appeared without an imprint. After Q&A, we’ll have open mic for New Acquisitions (broadly construed)! (September 9; contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org)

What better way to spend Friday the 13th than in the company of printers, prevaricators, peddlers, and penny broadsides? Join Nora Davies, digital asset specialist at Smith College, for Crymes and Rhymes: The Broadside Ballad and the Celebrity Criminal and enter the world of early modern London! (September 13, Caxton Club)

The FABS Bindings Interest Group (third Monday of the month) 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. You are welcome to join us on September 16, 7:30pm NY/4:30pm LA time! To get on the mailing list contact Jennifer Larson (info@fabsocieties.org)

The Baltimore Bibliophiles will host collections advisor Spencer Stuart for a presentation on the post-pandemic challenges facing bibliophilic societies and other nonprofits. He will discuss membership development, attracting donations and sustaining volunteer support (Baltimore Bibs, September 17)

The FABS 19th Century Zoom Group (third Thursday of the month) invites you for congenial conversation on all things 19th-century and bookish. You are welcome at the next meeting on September 19! To join the list contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org

How did people in the 15th and 16th centuries get their news? Brendan Dooley, professor of Renaissance Studies at University College Cork, will lecture on one of the Renaissance’s great forgotten inventions: regular public transmission of written news. Dooley’s examples will show how Renaissance news evolved from manuscript newsletters into printed newspapers, with long-term consequences still keenly felt. (The Grolier Club, Sept 20)

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. (FABS, Sept 24; NOTE that this group now meets at 7:00pm EST; contact Jennifer Larson at info@fabsocieties.org)

Join The Grolier Club for a live webcast as British historian, professor, and author Anthony Bale discusses his new book, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World through Medieval Eyes. This talk is co-sponsored by Dr. Adler’s new foundation, the New York Medieval Society. Professor Bale will explore a range of sources – maps, travel guides, itemized records, itineraries, pilgrim badges, and more – to illuminate the marvelous real and imagined journeys of medieval travelers (Sept 26; The Grolier Club)

William Claspy of the Kelvin Smith Library at Case Western will present "Charles Dickens in America," with a brief overview of the manuscript letters in the Kelvin Smith collection, plus the recent acquisition of a previously unpublished letter written by Charles Dickens in 1842. (Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society, Sept. 26)

 

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

 

Contact: Jennifer Larson, info@fabsocieties.org

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