September 2010, Volume 4, Issue 9

Dear Members and Friends of the Boston Athenæum,

As we suffer through these dog days of late summer, it is a pleasure to anticipate more autumnal temperatures – as well as the beginning of our new events season. If you have not already received our new Fall Booklet, please know it should be arriving sometime next week. And you can always go to our website and check for upcoming activities. Congratulations to Monica Higgins, our indefatigable Events Director, for planning yet another series of stimulating and enjoyable activities for all our members.

I am pleased that so many of you have enjoyed using our subscription to Naxos to listen to Classical and Jazz music, and I can tell you that new music and features are constantly added, including music that has become available through a recent partnership with Warner Classics. You can browse all our electronic resources listed on our website.

Even though the dates are still far off, I want to give all of our members advance notice that we will once again be closed during the winter holidays, from December 27, 2010 through January 3, 2011. This will be the last in a series of winter closings that have allowed us to investigate ways of cutting down on energy costs. This experiment has been very successful, and thanks should go to Associate Director John Lannon and his team of engineers for monitoring the effects of various adjustments that have proven to be cost-saving.

And finally: I am pleased to announce that beginning next June the Athenæum will remain open on Saturdays throughout the year, including the summer months. We hope that this expansion will allow continued access to our collections, exhibitions, and services to those of you who find it difficult to come in during weekday business hours. The extension of opening hours into evenings on Wednesdays has proven useful to many of you; we hope that these additional opening hours will enhance your ability to enjoy all that is special about the Athenæum.

With all best wishes,

Paula D. Matthews
Stanford Calderwood Director and Librarian
matthews@bostonathenaeum.org

"Here lies a bookseller, the leaf of his life being finished, awaiting a new edition, augmented and corrected."
Epitaph  on the grave of Jacob Tonson, St. Margaret’s Church, 1735.

In 1902, the Sunday Herald published an article on the Boston Athenæum with an accompanying photograph indicating where sixteen authors sat and studied on the second floor of the Library. The Herald’s story was in response to the presumed imminent move of the Boston Athenæum to a new location on the corner of Arlington and Newbury where it had purchased property. The Boston Athenæum sponsored a competition for the design of its new building and displayed the drawings in what is now the newspaper reading room. Excitement over the new and improved was tempered with nostalgia for the old. This chronicle of what was cherished in the old building shows a fraction of the strong affection members felt, stronger than the trustees imagined, because—as you know—the Boston Athenæum remained at 10 ½ Beacon Street. Please click on the image to the right to enlarge.

These days, as Athenæum librarians purchase more and more electronic resources which allow you the convenience of bringing the Boston Athenæum into your own home, office, car, or anywhere you have wireless access, I wanted to remind, perhaps unnecessarily, members about the in-house nooks and crannies for serendipitous research and relaxing study beyond the silent fifth floor reading room.  One of the favored spots since the building opened in 1849 has been the second floor. Of all the books checked out by members, the number one subject is fiction, which is shelved on the second floor, where members frequently browse the re-shelving area (just inside the arch of the long room) to see what others are reading and thus get implicit member recommendations.

The second floor houses the Reference Department -- with its staff members and print sources -- offers access to computers in the internet room (where the head librarian’s office was located in the original plans for this building), and provides small tables, comfy leather chairs, and seating at the tables in the center of the long room which also display over 200 current periodicals:  scholarly publications like the Journal of American History, Foreign Affairs, and Early American Literature; popular journals like Consumer Reports, Cooks Illustrated, and Yankee Magazine; as well as those in between scholarly and popular like History Today and Slightly Foxed. (Click here to view a list of all our current periodicals and their locations in the library.)

In fact, this is the very place where all those famous authors sat who were listed by the Sunday Herald in 1902. Now the table offers a convenient slanted surface on which to put your own reading (please be gentle with the periodicals) for easy note taking, now more likely done on a laptop than with ink and paper, although at least one member carries his portable typewriter around with him. (Do not worry; we have advised him to steer clear of the fifth floor and newspaper reading rooms, where quiet is the rule.) I have modified the photograph to show only eight authors (some of whom you may know) and juxtaposed it with a picture of the same space today. You can choose to sit in a spot preferred by Edward Everett Hale or Charles Sumner. I have provided brief biographies of all the authors below, but of course you can find many books about them in the Library’s stacks.
Perhaps in 2102, a blogger will post a copy of the modern picture here with links to 3D images of and ebooks by members who are writing in the building at this moment.  If you are or know a published author who is a member, please contact Mary Warnement (warnement@bostonathenaeum.org) in the Reference Department because we are compiling a list to use as resource for the “Athenæum Authors” feature on the website.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
 Emerson’s association with the Boston Athenæum has been well-documented; not only does the library possess one hundred fifty four books by him, but the reference shelves even contain Kenneth Walter Cameron’s Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Reading, which lists, with the aid of the Boston Athenæum’s archive, the books that Emerson checked out. (No guarantees that he read all of them.) The Sunday Herald describes his visits late in life with his daughter when they would sit near the windows on the Granary side and discuss their plans for the day; he invariably chose to remain and read rather than join her in making social calls.

Charles Sumner (1811-1874)
 Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts (1851-1874) was a staunch and inflexible opponent to slavery, whose speech during the 1856 debate on whether Kansas should enter the union as a free or slave state so angered Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina that he attacked Sumner three days later with a cane and beat him so savagely that his full recovery took years. The Boston Athenæum holds one hundred twenty nine books by Sumner, most of them speeches and pamphlets in special collections. You can make an appointment to see them using our online request form.

Francis Parkman (1823-1893)
 Francis Parkman was a historian whose first book, The California and Oregon Trail, chronicled his six-month journey through the frontier, and which would become the topic of most of his works, of which the Boston Athenæum has fifty one. He was a long-time trustee (1858-1893) who served on the Library Committee and whose appreciation of the historical record prompted the creation of the Confederate Imprints Collection.

Margaret Deland (1857-1945)
 Margaret Deland, born in Pennsylvania, rebelled against convention and moved to New York to study art at Cooper Union, after which she taught at the institution that would become Hunter College. She married a Bostonian, a printer, and to help support them, she painted china and wrote verses for Christmas cards. Encouraged by her husband, she began publishing poetry and fiction. The couple’s philanthropy took an unconventional form by welcoming unwed mothers with infants into their home, and Deland’s writings reflected her beliefs. Her works, decrying religious intolerance, were considered provocative. In 1926, she was the second woman, after Julia Ward Howe, elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (now the American Academy of Arts and Letters). Today, she is little-known and rarely studied; however, thirty five of her books wait on the shelves at the Boston Athenæum for when interest revives, as so often happens.

Jane Goodwin Austin (1831-1894)
 Christened “Mary Jane,” Jane G. Austin perhaps should have chosen Mary rather than risk comparison or confusion with the more well-known Jane Austen; after all, her mother was a poet, and she wrote stories from an early age. Her first publications, based then and ever after on scrupulous research, came while a teenager, but once she married Loring Henry Austin at the age of nineteen, she put aside her pen until her early thirties, when she began writing novels and articles again. The Boston Athenæum owns ten books by Austin, and according to the Sunday Herald (which misspelled her name “Austen”), she sat at the far end of the second floor long room, now an entrance to the drum stacks rather than a window.

Nora Perry (1831-1896)
 Nora Perry grew up in Providence and became a journalist and author of essays, poetry and romances. Like her contemporary Louisa May Alcott, she wrote romances as a teenager, and her first publication was serialized in Harper’s Magazine when she was only eighteen. She moved to Boston and became a correspondent for newspapers as well as a contributor of poetry, stories, and essays to magazines. Her later work was almost exclusively written for young girls. Of the dozen or so works by her on these shelves, about half are stored off-site, so if you are interested in Flock of Girls or Another Flock of Girls, simply request them from the Reference Department.

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909)
 Edward Everett Hale was a prolific writer best known for his story “Man without a Country,” of which there are five versions among Hale’s one hundred twenty eight books in the Boston Athenæum’s holdings. He wrote essays, biographies, and novels, and -- because he was an ordained minister -- sermons. Born of prominent Boston family, he attended Boston Latin School and Harvard. His great-uncle was Nathan Hale, the revolutionary patriot who declared, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” perhaps inspiration for “Man without a Country.”

Thomas Wentworth Higginson  (1823-1911)
 Higginson studied theology at Harvard, but his first congregation reacted negatively to his support of abolition and forced him to resign. He began lecturing and writing literary criticism, history, fiction, and biography. Now he is probably best known for his long correspondence with Emily Dickinson who responded to one of his essays in the Atlantic Monthly with a request for advice to a young poet. To modern dismay, he discouraged her from publishing until she polished her poetry, but do not assume he dismissed her as a female scribbler. Among Higginson’s eighty three books here, you will find his writings in support of women’s rights. 

Mary Warnement
William D. Hacker Head of Reader Services
warnement@bostonathenaeum.org

September is Library Card Sign-up month! Did you know that if you have a Family Membership, a Life Membership, or a Proprietorship, any children living in your household (regardless of age) can have their very own Boston Athenæum library card?  During the month of September, any child who gets his or her card will also get to use our fabulous collection of rubber stamps to adorn a personalized Athenæum bookmark keepsake. If you have a child in your family who would like a library card, please contact Karen E. Beach (617-720-7641) in the Membership Office. We would love to make sure that all of the children in our Athenaeum family have their very own library cards.

Suzanne Terry
Children's Librarian
Terry@bostonathenaeum.org

This Fall, we will welcome The Ancient Greco-Roman Classical Literature Reading Group ("Classics" for short) to the Athenæum.  With the exception of the first meeting on September 8, 2010, the group will meet the first Wednesday of the month from 6:00 to 7:30 and will focus on Greek and Roman literature in translation and the classical tradition. Member Derek Haddad, now a graduate student at Tufts in Classical Philology, will moderate the group. 

Ancient Greco-Roman Literature encompasses epic poetry, love elegiacs, odes, dramatic works, and historical narratives.  Those coming to the first meeting should read Hesiod's "Theogony" and the "Homeric Hymns"
(specifically Hymns 2, 3, 4, 5 - the Hymns to Demeter, Apollo, Hermes and Aphrodite). 

Any further questions, please visit the Discussion Group web page or contact Derek Haddad directly at dhaddad7@gmail.com.

Emilia Mountain
Circulation/Reader Services Assistant
mountain@bostonathenaeum.org

With only four weeks to go until the end of the fiscal year, we need your help to reach our $750,000 Annual Fund goal.

Since the Annual Fund supports all that we do, even small gifts have a big impact. 

Did you know that:

 a gift of $10 pays for the block of Stilton cheese that was served after Sebastian Smee – art critic at The Boston Globe – gave a lecture to a sold-out audience in August?

 a gift of $25 pays for a portion of the electricity that kept our members cool as they wrote their dissertations, articles, and books on the fifth floor on a hot July afternoon?

 a gift of $100 underwrites the purchase of four of the latest novels that members peruse on our 14-day loan shelves?

 A gift of $250 supports part of the salary of that reference librarian who spent yesterday afternoon helping a member locate the train schedule between western Pennsylvania and Florida in 1962?

 A gift of $1,000 keeps the doors open to our gallery for two weeks, providing world-class art to members and the public alike?

Please consider contributing to the Annual Fund now, in the waning days of this fiscal year.  We can’t reach our goal without you.

And thank you!

Thank you!

Janice C. Thompson
Director of Institutional Advancement
thompson@bostonathenaeum.org