The Caxton Club of Chicago has organized a major exhibition that will open in Chicago in April 2005. The exhibition celebrates the centenary of publication of the Club’s 1905 leaf book (that broke an incomplete copy of the first edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) with this 2005 exhibition of more than 60 leaf books from public and private collections. Opening in April 2005 at the Newberry Library in Chicago, the exhibition will travel in October 2005 to the San Francisco Public Library, in January 2006 to the Houghton Library at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass, and in April 2006 to the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Joel Barry Silver, Curator of Books, Lilly Library, Indiana University will be the curator of the exhibition.

A 200 page illustrated catalogue will be published by the Caxton Club; Christopher de Hamel, Donnelley Fellow Librarian at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, will provide the introduction. Included in the catalogue will be an essay on the leaf book by Daniel Mosser, professor of English, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia, and an essay on the legal and moral precepts in the US and internationally that protect cultural property from destruction or alteration.

Disbound and Dispersed: The Leaf Book Considered is the first exhibition to examine the history of the leaf book. A symposium entitled "Virtue and Vandalism: The Ethics of Breaking Books" will be held on May 20, 2005 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, Chicago, IL 60610. Panelists will discuss legal and ethical issues of book-breaking and leaf book publication. The program will be open to the public and moderated by Michael Thompson, President of the Caxton Club and an intellectual property attorney in Chicago. Panel members include a bookseller, a law professor, and a librarian, representing the different points of view on the issue of book-breaking.

For additional information, please call the Caxton Club at 312.255.3710 or contact the Club by email: caxtonclub@newberry.org