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The Huntington: Buying and Building One of the World’s Greatest Libraries
August 20, 2023 @ 2:00 pm PDT
Sponsored by The Book Club of Washington
Buying and Building One of the World’s Greatest Libraries
Presentation by Dr. Vanessa Wilkie
Senior Curator of Medieval Manuscripts & British History
at The Huntington Library
Online Sunday, August 20, 2 pm PDT
Register here: https://www.bookclubofwashington.org/events-1/buying-and-building-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-libraries
Dr. Wilkie will take us back to a time when wealthy Americans like Henry E. Huntington could acquire amazing collections formed abroad and build a large private library to house them. We’ll learn about the acquisition in 1917 of the Ellesmere and Bridgewater Collections and the Larpent Plays, explore some of the high points in these collections and touch on some of the people who built the original collections. Dr. Wilkie will also explain how these early acquisitions continue to inform research in the Library’s collections and influence the kinds of materials that The Huntington still acquires.
Dr. Vanessa Wilkie is the Head of the Library Curatorial Department and curates the Library’s renowned collections of medieval manuscripts and British History. She earned her PhD in British history from the University of California at Riverside and was a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Redlands before coming to The Huntington in 2013. Her book A Woman of Influence: The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England (Atria/Simon & Schuster) was published in April 2023.