The Grolier Club of New York

Join The Grolier Club and the Irish Arts Center for a special Bloomsday, June 16th, evening of traditional Irish music, featuring Cashel Blake Day-Lewis on fiddle, Ursula Garry on flute, Matt Stapleton on guitar, and Isaac Alderson on the uilleann pipes.

This event is available for online attendance only. Register via the link in our bio to receive the livestream access. See our Eventbrite for details about all events in the Risings Festival: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/risings-4835183

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

Q: What new observations might you hope visitors come to after seeing the show?

“The Irish Literary Revival came to the fore starting in the 1880s and 1890s following a period of failed political activism. It is fair to say that it provided the cultural confidence which led to a renewed effort to achieve independence. The violence that was part of that effort could never been imagined by likes of Yeats and Lady Gregory, however. Coming to terms with that violence became part of the project of Irish literature in the latter part of our exhibit.” - Alan Klein

In this photograph, Countess Markievicz appears in an Irish Citizen Army uniform, a handgun in her holster, in conversation with rebel Cathal O’Shannon at O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral, an event that helped spark the Easter Rising. An expert marksman, she served as an active combatant in the Rising and was sentenced to death with other leaders. When the British later commuted her sentence to life imprisonment because they feared the repercussions from executing a woman, she said, “I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me.”

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

Image Credit:
Countess Constance Markievicz. Vintage photograph, 1915. Courtesy of the Risings co-curators.

Join us Tuesday, June 9, at The Grolier Club for a preview of "Barry Moser, Bookwright - Exorcising Demons," following by a Q&A with Director Ralph Hammann.

With his work held in 150 museums worldwide, Barry Moser stands among the greatest illustrators and wood engravers of our time. 'Exorcising Demons' delves into the forces of Good and Evil that have haunted and driven his life and art—from his beginnings in the South to his journey north. Packed with his remarkable engravings, the film is a feast for the eyes and mind. Equally captivating are its unfiltered, intimate visits with Moser, whom Image Journal calls “the most honest-to-God God-haunted soul we’ve seen in a long time.”

Register to attend via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/preview-screening-barry-moser-bookwright-exorcising-demons-tickets-1988111810945?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true

Lewis H. Michaux (1885/95-1976) founded and ran the African National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem from 1939-1975. The store cultivated Black empowerment and literary community through books written by, about, and for Black people. The great collector Charles L. Blockson wrote about getting books inscribed by two of his literary heroes – Joel A. Rogers and Langston Hughs – during one visit to “the Harlem sage and paterfamilias of bookdealers.” Fifty years ago last week, The First Annual Lewis H. Michaux Book Fair extended the store’s mission after it closed. It ran for six years under the sponsorship of the Studio Museum in Harlem. In its first year, held 21-22 May 1976, Michaux himself exhibited from his collection of rare books, manuscripts, letters, and portraits of Black literary figures. The photograph of Michaux on the fair poster shows him sitting in a corner of his tightly packed store, a snapshot of the cultural center he curated in Harlem for nearly four decades.

Q: What is your favorite item or anecdote on view in the exhibition?

"There are newspaper clippings documenting the executions following the Rising and the imprisonment of hundreds and hundreds of Irish nationalists, handwritten lyrics of protest songs and multiple poems about the Rising titled ‘Easter, 1916,’ clipped from newspapers or written out. Page after page have been filled by someone who was totally invested in the tragedy that had just occurred.” - Alan Klein

“Both brash and insecure, Joyce writes at age 19 to ask Lady Gregory for help leaving Ireland. The forces of Ireland are driving him away from his native land, he writes, ‘yet I know no man yet with a faith like mine.’ Lady Gregory, ever supportive, loaned him money and gave him contacts to meet.” - Sandy Neubauer

Visit "Risings" Monday - Saturday, through July 25, or visit online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/risings

[1] Scrapbook of the Easter Rising. Prepared 1916
[2] Autograph letter signed by James Joyce to Lady Gregory [November 22, 1902]
Courtesy of the Risings co-curators.

Join The Grolier Club and Poets House on Monday, May 18, for an evening of poetry with Paul Muldoon and Grolier Club member Kevin Young, who will read a selection of poems by the leading poets of the Irish Literary Renaissance and their successors, as well as their own work. Admission is free – register online via for virtual attendance: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-exhibition-program-poetry-reading-tickets-1982037352075?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

Learn more about all the events celebrating this exhibition via our flyer and register for events via the Risings Festival Collection: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/risings-4835183

Last two days to visit Running Through Heaven: Visions of Jack Kerouac!

Thanks to Hyperallergic for this recent review of the exhibition. Drawn from the collection of member Jacob Loewentheil, the show’s “cherished letters, photographs, and talismans bring us into the daily life of the reluctant Beat Generation icon.”
Read the review here: https://hyperallergic.com/shoot-the-sh*t-with-jack-kerouac/

Visit the exhibition in our Second Floor Gallery through tomorrow, Saturday, from 10am to 5pm.

As the antiquarian book world converges on Firsts, London’s Rare Book Fair, this week, we unfurled a loooong fold-out map of the City of London to look back at the centre of the English book trade as it was in the early modern period. In the third volume of Kathrine Panzer’s update to Pollard and Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue, Panzer provides an index of London printers and publishers from 1476–1700 keyed to a map of London from December 1666, just after the Great Fire. This detailed map and index, packed with scholarship, stretches several feet—the perfect size for a book-collecting board game (with double-pica pieces, of course) for those of us tracking the London fair from home. If anyone wants to suggest some game rules, drop them in the comments below.

Among the over 30 objects from the Berg Collection of The New York Public Library Research on view in “Risings: The Irish Literary Revival and the Making of a Nation” at the Grolier Club is a rare, one-year anniversary poster of the Proclamation, Poblacht na hEireann / The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland (1917), printed with the same type as the original Proclamation read aloud by Patrick Pearse. Never before displayed, this copy was recently uncovered in the Berg Collection of The New York Public Library in a box described as “Irish Pamphlets: Easter Rebellion.” This exceedingly rare 1917 printing, initiated by the women’s nationalist movement Cumann na mBan to mark the first anniversary of the Easter Rising, was posted across Dublin using jam pots of glue, but most copies were quickly torn down by the police.

Learn more about the making of a nation at “Risings,” open Monday to Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM, or by visiting online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/risings

Photo: The Proclamation of the Irish Republic. “Poblacht na hEireann / The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland.” Printed by the Gaelic Press, Dublin, on the anniversary of the Easter Rising, 1917. Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Running Through Heaven: Visions of Jack Kerouac. Curator's Notes with Jacob Loewentheil.

Q: What draws you to Kerouac’s work?

A: What draws me to Kerouac is the raw, throbbing heartbeat at the center of his writing. He poured himself onto the page, across novels, letters, notebooks, and manuscripts, with a level of emotional exposure that is startlingly honest. His work captures the texture of interior life in a way few writers ever manage. Reading him feels less like interpretation and more like direct contact.

Visit the exhibition in our Second Floor gallery until May 16.