As an independent scholar, Pomeroy dedicated herself to researching and collecting the work of Alexander Anderson, the first engraver on wood in America. The resulting three-volume work, Alexander Anderson (1775–1870): Wood Engraver and Illustrator, an Annotated Bibliography, was co-published by Oak Knoll Press and the American Antiquarian Society in association with the New York Public Library in 2005. Pomeroy went on to publish two more key sources on Anderson: Alexander Anderson’s New York City Diary (1793–1799) (2014) and Alexander Anderson’s America (2019), the latter serving as the catalog for a Grolier Club exhibition drawn from her private collection of Anderson engravings. Pomeroy was also an amateur printer; the 2019 volume was published by her Burntcoat Press.
In 2020, Pomeroy made an important gift of nearly 1,300 titles as well as 384 boxwood blocks carved by Anderson to make his illustrations to AAS.
In the recording below, author Jane Pomeroy and Billie M. Levy discuss the career of Alexander Anderson and his impact on nineteenth-century children’s book illustration. Levy collected children’s books and founded the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Connecticut. The recording was made was in the 1990s for West Hartford Cable TV.
Courtesy of West Hartford Cable TV
Cumberland Foreside, ME
United States