The Caxton Club brings together archivists, authors, binders, book artists, booksellers, collectors, conservators, designers, editors, librarians, printers, publishers, scholars, and others. Members from these diverse backgrounds form a community that shares a love of printed, handwritten, and digital books and related textual objects, such as pamphlets, broadsides, maps, and ephemera. The club provides a forum to learn about the arts, history, and technologies of these materials, as well as a space to share the joys of appreciating and collecting them.

CAXTONIAN: Members receive the club’s journal, the Caxtonian, six times a year.
Caxtonian.org: a publicly available online archive of the first 20 years of the Caxtonian.
GRANTS: 2019–20 grant recipients: Meha Rey, Yann Trividic, Sara Jensen, Kathie DeLamater, and Annabel Pinkney.
PUBLICATIONS: The club has published 153 formal publications and other printed pieces in its 125+ years.
CHICAGO 101 AUTHORS: Each of the 101 titles is the focus of an essay by a leading scholar, writer, or bibliophile.
MELLON FELLOWS: Each year the club provides copies of Other People’s Books to Mellon Fellows at Rare Book School.

Caxton Members: Submit your item to our online exhibit, Caxtonians’ Collections.
Exhibit is open to all.



Upcoming Caxton events

  • Stephen Tabor on Extra-Illustration: A Possibly Unfamiliar, Thoroughly Intriguing, and Potentially Appalling History

    • 02/11/2022
    • 12:00 PM
    • 2/11/2022 NOON CT / 1:00 PM ET via Zoom. Note new time. Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Advance registration required via website.
    Register

    February Daytime Program


    It turns out that people were creating their own Facebooks long before the advent of the Internet. They would take apart a published book (gasp!), add illustrations, autographs, maps, and particularly portrait prints ... and then rebind the thicker volume to create a one-of-a-kind. Some called it literary scrapbooking.

    The practice even acquired a name that became a verb. What name? Zoom in to find out, as Stephen Tabor, curator of rare books at the Huntington Library, reveals the remarkable history of extra- illustration in a presentation rich with images of these rare volumes.

    Stephen Tabor specializes in rare books’ physical aspects – including bibliography, structure, printing history, provenance, binding, and annotation – with an emphasis on incunabula and English books printed before 1801. He is the principal Huntington liaison with three international bibliographical databases and has published descriptive bibliographies of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Register today, but don’t bring your scissors and glue pot!

    Zoom presentation is free and open to all.

    Advanced registration required via website.

    Show details

  • Neil Harris on Paris 1925: French Illustrated Books Go to the Deco Fair

    • 02/16/2022
    • 6:30 PM
    • 2/16/2022 6:30 PM CT/7:30 PM ET via Zoom. Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Advance registration required via website.
    Register

    February Evening Program


    Sponsored by the Caxton Club and the Chicago Art Deco Society


       


    Books were everywhere at the 1925 International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris.

    Until now, little has been written about their actual exhibition. This highly illustrated presentation will explore the variety of the work displayed, and suggest some strategies employed by the publishers.

    Dr. Harris is the Preston and Sterling Morton Professor of History and Art History Emeritus at the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous publications including Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury; and The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age.

    Click here to register for this program.

    Zoom presentation is free and open to all.

    Advanced registration required via website.

    Show details

Daytime Programs

Evening Programs

LATEST NEWS

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211 South Clark Street,
PO Box 2329,
Chicago IL 60604-9997


Tel: +1 (312) 970-1294
info@caxtonclub.org