May 2014 Dinner Meeting

Speaker: Paul Needham

“The Gutenberg Bible: The Chicago Connections”

What did Eugene Field, the “Wynken Blinken and Nod” man, have to do with Gutenberg? Come hear that story and much more when Paul Needham reveals why two famous Gutenberg copies owned by Chicagoans did not stay in Chicago. James Ellsworth, The Caxton Club’s first president, brought Chicago its first Gutenberg Bible in 1891. George Poole bought a Gutenberg New Testament from Caxtonian David Randall. Needham will disclose the ties that did not bind these remarkable volumes to Chicago and led to their eventual homes at Princeton’s Scheide Library and Indiana’s Lilly Library respectively. Needham will also discuss Gutenberg texts which remain in Chicago.


Union League, 65 W. Jackson, Chicago.