The Grolier Club of New York

07/28/2026

With just three days left until the Grolier Club closes to the public in August, our Library staff are busy paging books for our last few researchers of the summer. We’ll be answering our final batch of reference questions on Friday afternoon, so send us your questions soon! Reference and reader services will resume after Labor Day.

07/25/2026

To celebrate our final day of New Members Collect, we're spotlighting the collections of Leslie Schreyer and Nathan Benn, who are both avid collectors of photography.

Visit New Members Collect 2026 today from 10:00am. to 5:00pm. Admission is free.

Find out more online at the link in our bio!

Photo credits: Nicole Neenan
Slide 1: Brassai (Gyula Halasz) (Hungarian/French, 1899-1984), Couple at the Bal des Quatre Saisons, Rue de Lappe. Print c. 1932.
Slide 2: Eugène Atget. Hôtel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple. 1898.

07/24/2026

Last days to visit New Members Collect 2026. Featuring objects from the collections of 17 new members, including materials that once rested on fantasy writers’ desks, traveled aboard polar exploration ships, circulated through de-extinction startup offices, or still bear traces of literal toxicity.

Visit through Saturday, July 25, 10am to 5pm. Admission is free.

Photos by Janna Tew

07/21/2026

The Grolier Club welcomes Helfand Fellow Lucy Moynihan, a PhD candidate in History at the University of Liverpool. Her research project here in the Club’s Library, titled “Bibliophiles and Enslavement: Examining the Legacy of a Dissenting Dynasty”, relates to her doctoral dissertation about the Liverpool Athenaeum. She is particularly interested in the role the Athenaeum played as a social, intellectual and commercial networking site for leading Liverpool enslavers. During her fellowship, Ms. Moynihan will draw on our rich holdings of auction and private library catalogues to take a critical look at the libraries of three major families of book collectors who were members of the Athenaeum and who profited from enslavement: the Bright, Heywood, and Yates families. Her project challenges the idea of libraries as spaces of ‘Enlightenment’ - situating these collections within a broader system of violence and exploitation.

07/20/2026

This week, we spotlight the collections of members (and our Exhibitions Department staffers) Oscar Salguero and Shira Buchsbaum.

Salguero's Interspecies Library focuses on relationships with and expressions by non-human beings; his selections for New Members Collect explore both speculative and real works addressing de-extinction. Buchsbaum's collection documents the physical
remnants of artists' process, particularly in creating dustjacket designs.

Visit New Members Collect 2026 Monday through Saturday, from 10:00am. to 5:00pm. Admission is free.

Find out more online at the link in our bio!

Photo credits: Nicole Neenan
Slide 1: Ege Kökel. The Unextinct Dodo Project. Türkiye & Austria: Self-published, 2019.
Slide 2: Mary Stella Edwards. Maquette proofs for “Star-Wagon” by Peggy Wood. [Farrar & Rinehart, 1936].

07/16/2026

Q: How did you both begin to collect in this area?

"Like other story lovers, it started for me with high school then college classes reading James Joyce. I also happened to have a great aunt who’d actually met him while in Paris, and she owned a copy of Ulysses, and so the romance of Ireland took hold. Later, when you grow up and read more deeply into the troubles of a land, you realize how complicated yet still wonderful a story Ireland actually is. As Yeats famously said, 'A terrible beauty.'" - Sandy Neubauer

"I met Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1995, in the early 1980s when he was teaching at Harvard and I was a law student there. This encounter led me to reading his work and developing a deep interest in poetry more generally and, years later, to start collecting the works, letters, manuscripts and other material relating to both W.B. Yeats and Heaney." - Alan Klein

Visit “Risings” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or click the link in bio to visit online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/risings

Image Credits
[1] C[amille]. Rup, Zurich. James Joyce. Sepia-toned gelatin silver print. Inscribed: “To Arthur Symons / James Joyce / Paris, 29.5.925.” Courtesy of the Risings co-curators.
[2] Poster. Nobel Prize Announcement. Faber and Faber, 1995.

07/14/2026

The Grolier Club’s Library stages rotating displays from our own collections in the four cases in our reading room. This summer’s exhibition, curated by Library Assistant Sara Coffield, takes the form of a bibliophilic holiday, with an itinerary drawn form the Library’s postcard collection. Her title “Busman's Holiday” refers to a vacation spent doing exactly the same activities as one’s regular profession. Grolier Club members and visiting researchers alike have gone on many such trips, where professional passions, personal interests, and leisurely travel became inseparable. In the first half of the twentieth century, a number of bibliophiles felt inspired to share news of their journeys with one individual in particular: Ruth S. Granniss, the longest-serving Librarian of the Grolier Club (1906-1944).

The collection of postcards that she received during her tenure, a portion of which are on view in this exhibition, does not just tell the story of these trips, but of her significance to members and other citizens of the book world. Granniss saved the postcards and, in doing so, created a record of bibliographic pursuits that reveal the rich connections between members and the Club’s Library This exhibition, like the postcards, travels through Northern Europe, Southern Europe, England, and the United States. Follow the link below to read more!

The Grolier Club’s Library hosts rotating exhibitions of our own collections in the four cases we have in the Reading Room. The following text and examples from the Club’s collection come from…

07/13/2026

This week, we highlight the collections of members Gary L. Stiles and Dennis Schäfer, whose interests draw them to one particular subject, respectively.

Stiles's collection focuses on the life and works of politician and orator Winston Churchill, and Schäfer's collection focuses on the polymath ETA Hoffman.

Visit New Members Collect 2026 Monday through Saturday, from 10:00am. to 5:00pm. Admission is free.

Find out more online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/new-members-collect-2026!

Photo credits: Nicole Neenan
Slide 1: Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965). Holograph letter to Muriel Wilson, 3 pages, on 104 Mount Street stationary, 1904; Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965). My Early Life. London: Butterworth, 1940; A. W. Lloyd (1883-1966), cartoonist. “The Ruler of the King’s Navee,” Punch, October 4, 1939, p. 379.
Slide 2: Jacques Callot. Captain Zerbino and Scapino. ca. 1630; Friedrich Schnapp. TLS, January 24, 1949, to Stanislaus Rothballer; Hans Fronius and Michael Duske. E.T.A. Hoffmann. Lithograph on Paper, 2008.

07/09/2026

Q: This exhibition draws connections between artistic and political movements of early 20th century Ireland. What insights from this exchange can we draw from in our present climate?

"Like all new nations, Ireland began with a burst of idealism. Women’s rights were on the minds of some leaders of the Easter Rising, while others were pushing for the rights of workers. One could imagine a chance for the country to break free not only from British rule, but also from the chains of parochialism and violence. Unfortunately, a certain kind of conservative nationalism prevailed, silencing critics, and a deal was ultimately made between the powers of the new state and religious leaders. As in so many countries, individual freedom had to wait, but we’re seeing a new, freer Ireland now, 100 years on." - Sandy Neubauer

Visit “Risings” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/risings

Vintage studio photograph. From the estate of W. B. Yeats, with “Cuala Industries” stamp and George Yeats’s annotation, “Return to Mrs Yeats.” Courtesy of the Risings co-curators.

R. M. Fox. Rebel Irishwomen. Dublin and Cork. The Talbot Press Limited. 1935. Signed by Maud Gonne.

07/07/2026

This past weekend wasn’t just a major national anniversary, it was also the 140th Anniversary of Ottmar Mergenthaler’s Linotype machine. On July 3, 1886, Mergenthaler first tested his machine in the offices of the New York Tribune—allowing us to claim the invention for New York City, despite both the inventor and the Mergenthaler Linotype company calling Baltimore home. The so-called Linotype machine earned its name because it produced a “line-o-type”—a metal slug that comprised an entire printed line. And this famous “line-o-type" line? Story goes that the Tribune editor Whielaw Ried shouted it out at the “eureka!” moment of the machine’s first successful cast.

The first book set by Linotype, The Tribune Book of Open-Air Sports, was published in 1887, the first of many publications that benefited from this process that allowed typesetting via a speedy keyboard instead of the slow manual placement of individual sorts.

How does Linotype work? The operator types the text on the keyboard, and the machine assembles the matrices (molds for letterforms) in a line. The entire line is then cast as a single slug. We suggest heading to YouTube and watching some videos of the machine in action, which will be much more illuminating than any written explanation could hope to be.

The wood engraver John DePol cut the engraving shown here in 1961 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Merganthaler’s invention. Since its founding, the company has merged, was taken over, switched its business to digital fonts, and is now a subsidiary of Monotype Imaging Holdings.