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.

BOOK LAUNCH. DR. RONALD BAILEY, CLAUDETTE HUNT, CAXTONIAN DR. IRVIN HUNT, JACKIE VOSSLER, AND DR. DESIRÉE MCMILLION

CAXTONIAN.ORG: A PUBLICLY AVAILABLE ONLINE ARCHIVE OF THE FIRST 21 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

Caxton Club programs will resume in September with a second Friday daytime program at Noon CT. All daytime Caxton Club events will be virtual. Third Wednesday evening programs begin at 6:30 PM CT and will either be virtual-only (Zoom) events or in-person events with virtual (Zoom) access. Live program activity times may differ, so please check times listed for each event.

Virtual programs will consist of quality Zoom presentations with real-time Q&A features immediately following. All programs — virtual or in-person — require advance registration on the club’s website. This allows Zoom instructions to be sent before programs, and for planning for in-person programs where space is limited. As usual, we will record all programs and make them available for viewing in the Past Programs section of our website’s Members Only section.

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Douglas Pfeiffer on Authorial Personality and the Making of Renaissance Texts: The Force of Character

When
10/19/2022

5:30 PM

Location
10/19/2022

October Evening Program

Details to come.

Show details
Laurence Cotton on Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America

When
10/26/2022

6:30 PM

Location
October 26, 2022 6:30 PM CT via Zoom. Zoom presentation is free and open to all. Advance registration is required via website.

Register

October Evening Program

Sponsored by the Caxton Club and the Union League Club of Chicago

The year 2022 marks the 200th birthday of Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape designer for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago’s Jackson Park and designer of Riverside, Illinois. Public historian Laurence Cotton will talk about the national footprint of all the Olmsteds – father, two sons and the Olmsted Bros. landscape architecture firm – and how the Olmsted family left an enormous imprint on the American landscape by designing urban, state, and national public parks, private estates and gardens, residential neighborhoods, communities, and institutional campuses. The Olmsted philosophy focused on physical and mental health and the role of parks in enacting democracy in a multi-ethnic, multiracial society.

In his presentation, Laurence will explore the Olmsted legacy and give a visual tour of selected Olmsted landscapes across the country, with something of a focus on the upper Midwest and the Great Lakes states.

Laurence Cotton was the originator, principal researcher, and Consulting Producer for the nationally broadcast PBS film Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America. He has presented the film many times across the country since it was first broadcast in 2014 and during this year, he is making additional appearances across the United States, delivering his new PowerPoint presentation about the Olmsted legacy as part of the Olmsted200 commemoration. In addition to his Olmsted expertise, in his home state of Oregon, he has served as Executive Director of World Affairs Council of Oregon (now WorldOregon), on the board of directors of the Oregon State Parks Foundation (now Oregon Parks Forever), as content provider to Maya Lin and her team for the Confluence Project, and as Co-Chair of the Environmental Education Association of Oregon (EEAO).

Register for this program today.

When registering, copies of Olmstead and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea, published by the Library of American Landscape History, can be purchased for $28.50, including tax and shipping.

Show details