Historic First Editions in African American Literature

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Virtual lecture, free and open to the public CBS Producer Alvin Patrick shares his collection of African Americans' books with frontispiece author portraits. Club member Alvin Patrick, a CBS News Executive Producer, has amassed over 2,000 books during 30 years of collecting. He will discuss highlights of his first editions […]

I. B. Singer’s ‘Writings on Yiddish & Yiddishkayt’

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Scholars David Stromberg and Aaron Lansky will discuss a new book,Isaac Bashevis Singer's Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt, The War Years, 1939-1945 (White Goat Press). November 11 would have been the 120th birthday of the late Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer. This collection, edited and translated by David Stromberg, editor of […]

Book Anatomy: The Body Politics of Indigenous Book History

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Dr. Amy Gore, assistant professor of English at North Dakota State University, will discuss the connections between books, bodies, and Indigenous book history at the release of her latest monograph, Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023). From a book’s “spine” to its […]

Virtual Tour and Curator Q&A: The Best-Read Army in the World

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Virtual Tour of "Best Read Army" followed by a live Q&A with curator Molly Guptill Manning via Zoom. During World War II, one of the most important weapons U.S. troops wielded was the written word. At a time when propaganda and censorship choked free thought, the U.S. military fought against […]

Virtual Lecture: French Novelist’s Return from History’s Dustbin

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Free and Open to the Public on Zoom: Dec 7, 6:00pm Eastern time Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-french-novelists-return-from-historys-dustbin-tickets-719361448457?aff=ebdsoporgprofile The French 19th-century writer Fanny Reybaud has been relegated to the dustbin of literary history, even in her homeland, but not necessarily due to lack of talent. Her works included short stories, poems and […]

Virtual Lecture: Mara Frazier on Capturing Dance on Paper

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Free and Open to the Public  Dec 12, 6:00pm Eastern time Register for Zoom link here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-mara-frazier-on-capturing-dance-on-paper-tickets-719361358187?aff=ebdsoporgprofile Translating the evanescent art of dance into textual form presents a unique dilemma—how to capture a time-based, corporeal art form into writing? Throughout history, dance documentarians have devised intricate methods of notation and […]

Aldus Manutius: The Invention of the Publisher

Sponsored by The Grolier Clbub Aldus Manutius invented italic type and issued more first editions of the classics than anyone before or since. He also printed the mysterious Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the most beautiful book of the Italian Renaissance. In celebration of the first monograph in English on Aldus Manutius in over forty years, Grolier Club member […]

Kenneth W. Rendell on “Hidden Themes in Collecting”

Sponsored by The Grolier Club The second annual Kenneth W. Rendell Lecture on the Importance of Historical Letters and Documents. Grolier member Kenneth W. Rendell will speak on "Hidden Themes in Collecting: What I Discovered About My Own Collecting." This program will be live webcast. Registration here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-kenneth-w-rendell-on-hidden-themes-in-collecting-tickets-796214989467?aff=ebdsoporgprofile If you are a Grolier Club member, […]

George Fletcher: Judging a Book by Its Cover: Bookbindings from the Collections of the Grolier Club, 1470s-2020

Sponsored by The Grolier Club H. George Fletcher, Curator of "Judging a Book by Its Cover: Bookbindings from the Collections of the Grolier Club, 1470s-2020," will lecture on the Club's collection of fine and historic bookbindings in conjunction with Bibliography Week. This lecture will be live webcast. Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-annual-bibliography-week-lecture-tickets-796218158947?aff=ebdsoporgprofile If you are a Grolier Club […]

Who Owns This Sentence? Copyright Then and Now

The Grolier Club Copyright today controls a vast range of created things, from songs to software, fancy dress costumes and semiconductor chip designs; it also provides a neverending income stream to the owners of the rights it creates, who almost always turn out to be corporations. That’s obviously not what copyright was intended to do […]

Virtual Exhibition Tour and Q&A: Jeffrey Johnson on “Whodunit?”

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Free and Open to the Public; virtual tour Feb 5, 6:00pm -7:30pm Eastern Time Whodunit? Key Books in Detective Fiction features selections from Grolier Club member Jeffrey Johnson’s more than 400-piece collection of detective novels from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The exhibition highlights more than 90 early examples of […]

Rebecca Rego Barry: “The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells” [mystery fiction and more]

Sponsored by The Grolier Club Whodunit, you ask? Carolyn Wells—82 times between 1909 and 1942. Yet she is all but unknown today, unless it’s for her bibliomystery classic, Murder in the Bookshop (1936). In the early 20th century, she was an immensely popular author, excelling at country house and locked-room novels of detection and becoming one of […]