What are the opening hours?

Monday 10am - 4pm Tuesday 10am - 4pm Wednesday 10am - 4pm Thursday 10am - 4pm Friday 10am - 4pm Saturday 10am - 5pm

The Grolier Club of New York

Home
United States
New York, NY
The Grolier Club of New York

America's oldest & largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts. (212) 838-6690, x7, [email protected].

Founded in 1884, the Grolier Club of New York is America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts. Named for Jean Grolier (1489 or 90-1565), the Renaissance collector renowned for sharing his library with friends, the Club’s objective is to foster “the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper.” The Club maintains a research library on

printing and related book arts, and its programs include public exhibitions as well as a long and distinguished series of publications. As part of its mission to promote the art and history of the book, the Grolier Club regularly hosts the lectures and gatherings of other bookish organizations, and opens many of its own events to the public. No advance notice is required to view Grolier Club exhibitions; however, RSVPs and reservations for other events should be made through Maev Brennan, tel.

01/09/2025

Curator's Notes: Imaginary Books. Reid Byers, curator of the show, shares some thoughts on the subjects of unfinished and lost books:

"Unfinished books of course cause that sweet, melancholy ache recorded by Whittier in 'Maud Muller'
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'
And when, in a book, a book is mentioned as lost, it is usually because the author regrets the loss already and is trying to communicate that regret for the reader to share."

01/08/2025

Imaginary Books as featured in the print edition of Times Literary Supplement on December 6, 2024.

"Now The Lady Who Loved Lightning has taken up temporary residence at the Grolier Club in New York. Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished and Fictive Works Found Only in other Books is a witty exhibition curated by Reid Byers, the author of The Private Library: The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Book-Room. A "post-structuralist project", it runs to more than 100 imaginary books, and seems to offer much to contemplate in terms of literature's ever-flimsy hold on reality."

Visit the exhibition free of charge, in our second-floor gallery, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm; or click here for more: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/imaginary-books

01/07/2025

The sober beauty of fine press typography suits itself to an oak bookcase as easily as a radical idea. Carl Purington Rollins, nearly a decade into his tenure as Yale’s University Printer, privately published this Thoreau essay, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” with his wife Margaret in 1928. Like Thoreau, Rollins had his own formative year in rural Massachusetts after graduating from Harvard, establishing a press at the New Clairvaux arts and crafts utopian community. At the sign of the Chorobates, the Rollinses’ traditional style expresses “Civil Disobedience” in its natural subtleties. The Rockwell Kent vignette works as a metaphor for the typography, showing an oak sapling’s young roots breaking free of its pot. It’s echoed by the vine leaf sprouting from the last word of Thoreau’s text, and even by the manuscript interjection on the printed gift label – “& Mrs.” The beauty of their typography predisposes us to the work, gently accommodating the radical text to our eyes – like a pot its roots can escape from.

01/06/2025

Many of the volumes on view in “Imaginary Books” are bound in highly unique materials. This edition of “Memories” by Death, first mentioned in Sir Terry Pratchett’s “Thief of Time,” is bound in, appropriately, a deep Agatean winter’s night.

While best practices for book handling recommend clean, dry hands for most materials, we still advise that any books bound in toxic materials be handled with gloves. This copy of “Death in the Pot” by Harriet Vane is bound in poison: the green is arsenic, and the red is cyanide. It is believed to have been made for the library at Duke’s Denver (for display only, of course) as a humorous birthday present for Harriet from young Lord Saint-George. For safety’s sake, we left protective gloves in the case to remind ourselves to handle with care upon deinstallation.

Visit “Imaginary Books” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit the exhibition online https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/imaginary-books

Photo by Jeff Altepeter. From the Collection of Reid Byers.
Memories. DEATH. n.l.: unpublished manuscript, n.n. Bound in night.
Death in the Pot. HARRIET VANE (Lady Peter Wimsey). London: MG, 1922.

01/03/2025

"Move over, Alexandria: A new exhibit features lost, imagined, and totally fake books. For the next few months in New York City, book nerds with a penchant for esoterica can enjoy a special treat."

Thank you for the recent feature of Imaginary Books.
Visit the exhibition free of charge, in our second-floor gallery, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm; or click here for more: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/imaginary-books

01/02/2025

Reid Byers, Curator of Imaginary Books, shares some thoughts on the concept of liminality:

"An encounter with an imaginary book brings us forcibly to a liminal moment, confronted with an object that we know does not exist, but then it leaves us suspended in this strange space, for being magical, the book is not to be touched. It is held in existence in the exhibition room only by a carefully balanced ontological tension, and for technical thaumaturgical reasons, it cannot be opened. It appears before us to amuse, to prompt a gasp, a knowing chuckle, or the briefest thought of “O, how I wish!”

While the experience of the imaginary book is generally intended to amuse, it can also be caustically satiric or dramatically aesthetic. It always inspires reflection: what difference would it make if we could open these books? Would we laugh differently if we still knew what Aristotle thought was funny? What if young Karl Marx had finished the comedy he started? What function does an imaginary book serve in its fictional world, and what does that tell us of ours? These books raise serious questions for their would-be readers."

12/30/2024

Imaginary books for young people almost always appear in books for young people, if they appear at all. “The Songs of the Jabberwock,” first mentioned in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There” is quite memorable for being composed in a language unfamiliar to the titular character. The edition on view is bound in a delightfully bright purple cloth, having kept its color on the journey back through the eponymous looking glass.

“Shakespeare in Baby Talk” is unusual as a doubly imaginary book: Raymond Chandler threatened to write this under the pseudonym of Aaron Klopstein, so it is a book both unwritten and fictive. It consists of several essays and two of Shakespeare’s plays written in baby talk, evidently trying to outdo Charles and Mary Lamb. Of particular interest is the essay on As Ums Wikes It.

Visit “Imaginary Books” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit the exhibition online https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/imaginary-books

Photo by Jeff Altepeter. From the Collection of Reid Byers.
The Songs of the Jabberwock. ANONYMOUS. Looking-Glass: n.p., n.d.
First mentioned in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.

AARON KLOPSTEIN [RAYMOND CHANDLER (1888 – 1959)]. Shakespeare in Baby Talk. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1952.

12/27/2024

After Lincoln’s assassination, the nation was consumed with unprecedented anguish. Mary, Lincoln’s wife, wanted only the Washington funeral, then for her husband’s body to be brought straight to Illinois. Secretary Stanton convinced her to have a multi-stop funeral train, with simultaneous services on all military posts and a funeral train that curved through the North and West, as detailed by this broadside of his funeral procession. The train roughly tracked in reverse the inaugural trip the Lincolns took when they first moved to the White House. There were twelve stops: Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia; New York, Albany, Buffalo; Cleveland, Columbus; Indianapolis, Michigan City; then Chicago. The final stop, described in this program, was Springfield. There Lincoln lay for two days, in the very state capitol whose presence in Springfield was due to Lincoln’s legislative efforts in the 1830s.

Visit “Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print” in-person Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/abraham-lincoln-his-life-in-pr

Photo credit:
In Memory of President Lincoln, President of the United States [Abraham Lincoln Mourning Card] (n.p.: n.p., 1865).
Obsequies of President Lincoln [Procession Program] ([Springfield, IL: n.p., 1865]).

Photos by Vincent Dilio. Courtesy of the David M. Rubenstein Americana Collection.

12/26/2024

"BREAKING: In what might be this century's most surprising literary discovery, scholars have located the only extant copy of "The Chums of Chance at Krakatoa" (1912). Capt. Quincy Adams's rousing adventure narrative — long presumed lost — was first mentioned by Thomas Pynchon in "Against the Day." You can see this impossibly rare copy of "The Chums of Chance at Krakatoa" at a new exhibit that opened yesterday at the Grolier Club in New York."

We finish the year with a look at a recent Washington Post Book Club mention (December 6) of our second floor gallery show Imaginary Books.
Visit the exhibition Mon-Friday, from 10am to 5pm (check our Holiday schedule on our website).

12/23/2024

Please see our holiday hours.

The Grolier Club will be closed Tuesday, December 24-Thursday, December 26, and Monday, December 30-Wednesday, January 1.

The Exhibition Galleries will be open to the public on Monday, December 23; Friday, December 27; and Saturday, December 28.

Wishing you a pleasant holiday season!

12/20/2024

"To the casual viewer, the books on display in the second-floor gallery of the Grolier Club in Midtown Manhattan look like an impressive collection of rare tomes—not unusual fare for the bibliophilic society. There is a worn Ernest Hemingway, a collection of Sappho poems, and an eerie-looking Sylvia Plath cover. Some bear author names that perhaps sound only vaguely familiar: Harriet Vane, Samuel Pickwick, Orlando.
Visitors roam the gallery, eyeing the delicate volumes enclosed in glass cases. Every few minutes, someone giggles. They get the joke: none of these books is real."

Thank you for today's review of Imaginary Books.

The show will be open to the public on Monday, December 23; Friday, December 27; and Saturday, December 28. More info here: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/imaginary-books

12/19/2024

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln happened just as the North began to embrace a brighter postwar, postslavery future. Lincoln was killed because he had won the war, ended slavery, and saw a future with some amount of voting rights granted to African Americans. The response across the Union was immediate shock and anger. While two previous presidents had died in office, no president had yet been killed by a conspiracy. Newspapers rushed to report the breaking and tragic news.

The assassination was a Confederate plot by John Wilkes Booth and nine suspected associates. Booth died in a firefight during his attempted escape. Eight conspirators received sentences by a military tribunal, which required only a majority vote of five out of nine judges for a guilty verdict—four were hung, four were sentenced to hard labor, and one was tried in civil court. This National Police Gazette issue depicts the culprits and their fates.

Visit “Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print” in-person Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/abraham-lincoln-his-life-in-pr

Photo credit:
“Sad News! The President Assassinated!” [Newspaper Extra] (n.p.: n.p., 1865).
“Execution of the Conspirators,” National Police Gazette (New York, NY) July 15, 1865.

Photos by Vincent Dilio. Courtesy of the David M. Rubenstein Americana Collection.

12/17/2024

Founded in 1944, the Hroswitha Club of women bibliophiles took its name from the 10th century playwright and poet Hroswitha of Gandersheim. In 1949, the Club established the Sarah Gildersleeve Fife library to collect books written by its members or pertaining to the Club’s interests. Each of the Hroswitha Club’s books was marked with a bookplate designed by Sarah B. Hill after a woodcut by Dürer found inside the 1501 editio princeps of Hroswitha’s works. Appropriately enough, this edition was their first accession, donated by the accomplished bibliophile Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt. The Hroswitha Club’s copy, on deposit with the Grolier Club since their disbanding in 2004, bears their bookplate alongside the bookplates of Mrs. Hunt, the famous French bookseller Edouard Rahir, and an unidentified blank commercial plate.

12/16/2024

Books that appear in fantasy often have generally significant and magical elements of the plot, but they are most often enigmas unto themselves. On view in “Imaginary Books” is the most notorious of the Levantine grimoires and one of the many books that must be handled with caution, if at all: Necronomicon. First mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Hound,” Legend claims that its use results in a horrible death at the hands of invisible monsters. To ensure the safety of our visitors, the book has been kept sealed in this Wells Fargo strongbox.

Visit “Imaginary Books” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit the exhibition online via the link in our bio.

Photo by Jeff Altepeter. From the Collection of Reid Byers.
The Book of Sand. El libro de arena. ANONYMOUS. Bombay(?): n.p., n.d.
First mentioned in the eponymous collection by Jorge Luis Borges.
Necronomicon. Νεκρονοµικον. كتاب الموتى. ABDUL AL-HAZRED. In Vinegia: Appresso Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari et Fratelli, 1541. First mentioned in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Hound.”

12/12/2024

"At the Grolier Club on the Upper East Side is an object never before displayed in public: an edition of one of Hemingway’s first novels, which was stolen when his first wife left a bag unattended on a train in 1922. The manuscript was never recovered, and the novel lost to history. But there is a twist: The copy at the Grolier Club is itself a kind of fiction, part of an exhibition called “Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books,” curated by Reid Byers, a Maine-based collector and writer."

A fantastic review of Imaginary Books at The New York Times , this past December 4.

Visit the exhibition free of charge, in our second-floor gallery, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm; or click the link in our bio for more.

12/11/2024

"At a small, unassuming exhibit in midtown Manhattan, you can see the lost translation of Homer’s single comic epic, judge the art design on Sylvia Plath’s unpublished manuscript Double Exposure... or examine the one remaining copy of Aristotle’s Poetics II: On Comedy... The extremely rare collection of books, on display at the Grolier Club until 15 February, spans texts from ancient Greece to 20,000 years in the future, when the Book of the Bene Gesserit populated the libraries of Dune. The one commonality? None of them exist."

A wonderful review of Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works, our current exhibition curated by Reid Byers, has been published in The Guardian today!

Visit the exhibition free of charge, in our second-floor gallery, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm.

12/10/2024

One of the joys of working with private library catalogues are their idiosyncrasies. Some include hand-drawn maps of shelves, some have added reading notes next to particular entries, some use unique classification systems for arranging books. The catalogue of the library belonging to the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet includes a system of two-letter codes for the books in his collection, which could be added to the margins of a given entry. These include designations for “obscene,” “bad,” and “mediocre” books, as well as “learned,” “sought-after,” and “good” books. For example, he marks the pornographic novel Thérèse Philosophe as obscene. Among his scientific books, he marks botanical studies by Pierre Antoine Renault and Thomas-François Dalibard as "bad," but François Victor Mérat’s work is “esteemed”

12/05/2024

“Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works” from the collection of Reid Byers is now open in our Second Floor Gallery! Part bibliophilic entertainment and part conceptual art installation, Imaginary Books features a collection of books that do not really exist. Curated by Grolier Club member Reid Byers, the exhibition includes approximately 100 books and associated arealia from his collection—all simulacra created with a team of printers, bookbinders, artists, and calligraphers—of lost books that have no surviving example, unwritten books that were planned but left unfinished, and fictive works that exist only in fiction.

This week we’re highlighting a work that might be new to even the most studious fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fan: “The Giant Rat of Sumatra” is the most famous of the unrecorded cases of Sherlock Holmes. Recorded by Dr. John H. Watson and first cited in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," the Matilda Briggs associated with this case was not the lady in question, but the tramp steamer out of Indonesia that carried the eponymous rat.

Visit “Imaginary Books” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit the exhibition online https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/imaginary-books

Address

47 E 60th Street
New York, NY
10022

Opening Hours

Monday	10am - 4pm
Tuesday	10am - 4pm
Wednesday	10am - 4pm
Thursday	10am - 4pm
Friday	10am - 4pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm

Website

http://www.grolierclub.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Grolier Club of New York posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to The Grolier Club of New York:

Videos

Excerpts from our recent Symposium on Billy Budd at 100. Held on October 9 and moderated by Richard Brodhead, former president of Duke University, the symposium featured distinguished speakers: Dr. John Bryant, founding editor of "Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies" and director of the "Melville Electronic Library;" Dr. David Greven, author of "All the Devils Are Here: American Romanticism and Literary Influence;" and Grolier members G. Thomas Tanselle, past president of the Grolier Club; and Henry Wessells, writer and antiquarian bookseller and author of "A Conversation Larger than the Universe" (2018). Visit our second-floor exhibition, Melville’s Billy Budd at 100, open to the public until November 9, Monday to Saturday from 10 AM to 5 PM. For more information, visit: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/billy-budd

Excerpt from our recent event "A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages," featuring British historian, professor, and author Anthony Bale in conversation with Grolier Club member Gillian Adler. The Grolier Club offers events year-round. For more information on upcoming lectures and tours, visit our Eventbrite page here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/the-grolier-club-30176517250

Deirdre E. Lawrence, curator of 'Language, Decipherment, and Translation - From Then to Now' (Feb 29 to May 11, 2024), highlights The Book of Spells (2014) by Michael J. Winkler, a conceptual work exploring abstract imagery and hidden patterns in the signs of language.

As we prepare for the upcoming season, we wanted to share excerpts from recent exhibitions. Jeffrey Johnson, curator of "Whodunit?" (Nov 30, 2023 - Feb 10, 2024), highlights his collection of 19th and 20th-century detective books.

The most controversial dictionary ever. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961), edited by Phillip B. Gove, who believed dictionaries should be objective, scientific, and modern, shocked the literary world by including terms like "ain't" as Standard English, challenging the prevailing view of dictionaries as unquestionable authorities.

Bryan A. Garner, curator of Hardly Harmless Drudgery, presents a selection of "offbeat" English dictionaries, mostly from the collection of co-curator Jack Lynch. Including: "The Queen's Vernacular: A Gay Lexicon" (1972), "The New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary" (1944), the first dictionary on computer slang, "CoEvolution Quarterly 29:26–35" (1981), and "A Feminist Dictionary" (1985).