History of the Book

In most college and university libraries, materials published before 1800 have been moved into special collections, while the post-1923 books remain in general circulation. But books published between these dates are vulnerable to deaccessioning; often libraries clear out the duplicates, assuming that circulating copies of any given nineteenth-century edition are essentially identical to one another. When you look closely, however, you see that they are not.

Full of romance and adventure, dime novels were a variety of melodramatic fiction that was popular in the United States from about 1860 until the early 1900s.  Published as cheap paperbacks (most cost only ten cents), they were generally regarded as low-quality fiction. Women, more often than not, were major characters in these novels. This exhibition explores these women.

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This exhibition uses images and objects from the AAS collections to illuminate the spaces where reading happened in early America.

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Scott Casper

Jeff Groves

David S. Reynolds, Michael Winship

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.

A story about mistaken identity involving a burglary. Author Henry Kunze, Jr. (1857-1922) was a Detroit, Michigan amateur printer; he later worked as a bookkeeper and real estate agent in Detroit. Publisher Will A. Innes (1857 or 1858-1889) worked as a clerk and later a newspaperman in Grand Rapids, Michigan.