Book Madness
During the mid-nineteenth century, Americans witnessed the growth of major public, university, and historical society libraries. In her new book Book Madness: A Story of Collectors in America, Denise Gigante brings to life the stories of bibliophiles who assembled these institutions and shaped intellectual life in America during the 1840s. Booksellers, publishers, editors, librarians, journalists, poets, actors, politicians, and even clergymen all hastened to collect books, manuscripts, and other objects related to America's history.
Godine at Fifty
Join us as David Godine discusses the most memorable books he published during his fifty-year career. From his earliest days as a letterpress printer to the present digital era, Godine managed to thrive as the reign of hot metal type that had endured for almost 500 years was coming to an end, when retailers were mostly brick-and-mortar stores, when library purchases were primarily books, and when correspondence was carried on through letters and the telephone.
Black Women Poets Respond to the Brown Family Archive
Join us as Worcester poets share their responses inspired by material from the Brown Family Collections, one of the earliest and largest intact nineteenth-century Black family’s libraries in America. The collections center around William and Martha Ann Brown, who were married in Worcester in 1850, and their son, Charles F. Brown.
Reading Pleasures
Join us as literary historian Tara A. Bynum discusses her new book Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America. In the book, Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God.
Chat With a Curator — And Bind Your Own Booklet!
Get up close to letters, diaries, newspapers, and books that children wrote and produced in the nineteenth century. Chat with AAS curators about these materials and hear stories about how imaginative young writers recorded their daily lives, wrote stories and poetry, expressed their beliefs, and commented on serious issues of their time. Then try your hand at binding your own booklet or diary with the help of a conservator. This program is held in conjunction with the Historic Children’s Voices project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Behind the Scenes of Master Slave Husband Wife
Master Slave Husband Wife tells the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his” slave. The Crafts’ own 1860 narrative, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, provides a powerful first-hand account of this extraordinary act of mutual self-emancipation. Yet, many mysteries remain that the Crafts would not or could not discuss.
A New England Tragedy: The Life and Death of Hiram Harwood
The story of Hiram Harwood (1788-1839) is the story of an individual's struggle to achieve manhood within a family devoted to the ideal of patriarchy. In this lecture based upon his recent book, A Tale of New England, Robert E. Shalhope details how the pressure on Hiram to conform--to become a diligent farmer--was tremendous. Viewing himself as a man of pleasure rather than a man of business, Hiram struggled against the efforts of his father and grandfather to make him live up to their expectations.
The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power
In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clichés, Mark Peterson, in his new book, The City-State of Boston, highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America.