Cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and novelist Jules Feiffer will present an illustrated talk at the Library on Friday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m.
Sponsored by the Center for the Book in cooperation with the Library's Prints and Photographs Division, the presentations will take place in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the Library's James Madison Memorial Building. The program is free and open to the public.
Mr. Feiffer's talk and an exhibition of his works in the Madison Foyer, Oct. 19-Jan. 31, mark the acquisition of his personal papers by the Library and celebrate the creative achievements of his long and distinguished career. The exhibition and the Jules Feiffer Collection will be featured in a future issue of the LC Information Bulletin.
Nicholas Basbanes to Speak at LC on Oct. 23
Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibiomanes and the Eternal Passion for Books (Holt, 1995), will speak at the Library at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 23. His presentation, part of the Center for the Book's "Books & Beyond" series, will take place in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the Library's Madison Building. Mr. Basbanes will discuss his research and the writing of A Gentle Madness and describe a second volume about book collecting that he is now writing.
"We're pleased to present Nicholas Basbanes and a talk about book collecting and book collectors," said Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole. "The last Center for the Book program on this topic was a 1983 talk by William P. Barlow Jr., titled "Book Collecting: Personal Rewards and Public Benefits."
A Gentle Madness was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. Now in its fifth printing, the book has been named an alternate selection of the Book- of-the-Month Club, the Quality Paperback Club and the Readers Subscription Book Club. Nicholas Basbanes has been a professional journalist for more than 30 years and has written articles, essays and reviews for numerous newspapers, journals and periodicals. The former book review editor of the Sunday Telegram in Worcester, Mass., he now writes a literary column that appears in 25 newspapers throughout the country. He also is a frequent commentator on "The Book Guys," a national book call-in show heard coast-to-coast on National Public Radio.
The Book in America Published
In cooperation with the Library of Congress, Fulcrum Publishing has published The Book in America, with Images from the Library of Congress, by Richard W. Clement. Featuring 24 color and 94 black-and-white illustrations from the Library's rare and often unique book and special collections, The Book in America brings to life the story of the book in America from 1638 to today. The foreword is by Dr. Billington. John Cole wrote the afterword.
Author Richard W. Clement is a librarian at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where he also is a professor of English and proprietor of the Hole and Corner Press.
The Book in America is the ninth in Fulcrum Publishing's Library of Congress Classics series, which explores American and world culture through the Library's incomparable collections. Divided chronologically into five chapters ("Colonial Book Production," "Publishing in the New Nation," "The Rise of the Great Houses," "Industrialization and Expansion," "The Book in Twentieth Century America"), it also includes thematic sections on "Libraries in America," "Reading in America" and "Books at War." It includes a list for further reading, the Library of Congress negative numbers or item call numbers for the illustrations and a detailed index.
A 150-page volume, The Book in America, with Images from the Library of Congress, is available for $39.95 in bookstores throughout America. It also may be purchased in the Library of Congress Sales Shop. For information call (202) 707-0201.
SHARP 1996 at AAS
Two hundred eighty participants registered for the fourth annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP), which was held on July 18-21 at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in Worcester, Mass. The attendance, reflecting the continuing growth of interest in book history, well surpassed the old record of 200 attendees at the 1994 conference at the Library of Congress, which was hosted by the Center for the Book (see LC Information Bulletin, Sept. 19, 1994.)
More than 100 papers were presented at the meeting, many of them by graduate students and young scholars. Many of the 42 panel sessions were chaired by experienced scholars and librarians. Robert A. Gross of the College of William and Mary and chairman of the AAS Program in the History of the Book in American Culture, presented the keynote address, titled "Reading Books, Reading Culture." The concluding session was a roundtable discussion on "Literary Criticism, Literary Theory and the History of the Book."
The Library of Congress was represented by Rosemary Plakas of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division; Mary Elder, also of the Rare Book Division, who chaired a panel on "The Implications of Alphabets and Movable Type;" Gayle T. Harris, Copyright Office, who chaired a panel on "Plays and Films, Novels and Novelizations;" and John Y. Cole of the Center for the Book, who chaired a panel on "North American Library History" and served on the conference program committee.
Prior to the opening of the conference and following up on an initial meeting at the Library last September (see LC Information Bulletin, Oct. 16, 1995), Dr. Cole convened a meeting of representatives of book history centers throughout the English-speaking world. Nineteen people attended. Participants explored prospects for fund-raising, creating lectureships, launching and sustaining graduate and undergraduate courses in print culture, a projected multivolume history of libraries and culture in the United States and publishing a concise introduction to book history aimed at students and general readers.
The group will meet again at the fifth SHARP annual meeting, which will be held in England at the University of Cambridge on July 4-7, 1997. SHARP welcomes proposals for papers at the 1997 conference. The deadline for receipt of proposals is Nov. 20, 1996. Papers can deal with any aspect of the creation, diffusion or reception of print in any historical period. Proposals (one page maximum per paper) for either individual papers (20 minutes in length) or full panels (comprising a chair and three papers) may be submitted. They should be sent to James Raven, SHARP Conference Programme Committee, 51 Sherlock Close, Cambridge CB3 OHP, United Kingdom. All presenters must be or become members of SHARP. For membership information, contact Linda Connors, Drew University Library, Madison, NJ 07940.
History of Publishing at LC
Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole is the author of "Publishing at the Library of Congress: A Brief History," which appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of Publishing Research Quarterly (vol. 12, no. 2.) The article summarizes publishing and its role at the Library of Congress from an eight-page booklist published in 1801 to the cooperative private-public programs and the electronic products of the mid-1990s.