The Newberry presents

This program is sponsored by the Caxton Club

To download/print the flyer for this program, click here.

Matthew Carter

Snell Roundhand is one of the most popular typefaces around, but few are acquainted with its fascinating history. In this program, Snell Roundhand designer Matthew Carter will discuss the origins of this gorgeous typeface in a seventeenth-century script, his work transforming this script into a modern-day font, and the ways type design has changed since the mid-twentieth century.

Snell Roundhand is based on the penmanship of the English writing-master Charles Snell (1667–1733), who advocated a simple style of writing in contrast to his “brother quills,” the competing writing-masters of his day, whose excessively elaborate and flourished hands he deplored.

In this discussion with the Newberry’s Jill Gage, Carter will discuss the exciting evolution of Snell’s seventeenth-century script into a twentieth-century typeface.

For more information and to register click here.

March Daytime Program

Carl Smith

October 1871. Drought. Barn. Fire. Chaos. Destruction. That’s the story that has been told and told again about this signal event that is remembered with one of those stars on Chicago’s flag. But noted historian Carl Smith is going to share a much more specific tale, one crafted especially for Caxtonians. He’ll answer the question, “What did the fire and its aftermath mean for books, authors, publishers, and libraries?” Smith, an emeritus professor from Northwestern University is well known to Caxtonians; he has two essays in the Club’s most recent publication,

Chicago 101. Join us for this remarkable story about The Great Fire’s impact on all things printed!

March Evening Program

Silvia Beltrametti

The graphic satire of Georgian London has been much explored in recent scholarship. Almost entirely neglected, however, is its provincial counterpart. This talk addresses the implications of the absence of copyright law in nineteenth-century Ireland, by discussing examples of caricatures produced by Dublin publisher William McCleary. Until now commentators have been quick to argue that the absence of a vigilant copyright regime enabled rampant piracy, and that most engravers and publishers in Georgian Dublin, including McCleary, were doing little more than pirating the work of famous London satirists such as James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruickshank. This was both for internal consumption in Ireland and for export back to Britain to undercut the mainland market. Despite the fact that many such prints owe their compositions to pre-existing models, McCleary produced work that was is in several ways distinctive, and that he used his position on the periphery to dynamic and innovative effect. His work reflects the paradox at the core of much Irish art which Toby Barnard characterizes as “distinctive and derivative” whereby metropolitan models were given an Irish twist, or flavor.

March Evening Program

Kinohi Nishikawa

Over the past 15 years, the Black Arts movement has undergone a much-needed critical reassessment in literary and cultural history. Once typed as a propaganda arm of the Black Power movement, Black Arts today is recognized as a diverse coalition of collectives that broke from mainstream institutions in order to reframe cultural production around Black people themselves. Yet even this revised understanding of the movement has lacked a bibliography that can shed light on how Black Arts collectives went about building alternative institutions. In presenting new bibliographic findings, this paper suggests book design played a vital, if still overlooked, role in manifesting the movement’s commitment to black readers. For poets and publishers alike, design held the key to situating literature on a continuum of arts-making and to tracking the ephemerality and dynamism of a movement that was constantly in flux.

Kinohi is Associate Professor of English and African American studies at Princeton where his work focuses on twentieth century African American literature.

May Daytime Program

Sara Quashnie

We’re stepping pretty far out onto the limb with this presentation. Really, how likely is it that these will resonate with Caxtonians?

• Stories about books, maps, documents, ephemera
• Tales of people who collected, sold, and cataloged them
• Generous illustrations featuring rare and important materials
• The resources of one of the great university Americana collections
• Introductions to women and men whose stories are fresh as they are intriguing

Yes, it’s a risk. But we’re taking the chance and inviting Sara Quashnie, who coedited Americana Is A Creed for the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. This wonderful book includes autobiographical sketches and essays about thirty two people whose stories are remarkable and impacts are lasting.

Sara Quashnie is old enough to have collected history and MSLIS degrees, to be on staff at the Clements, and to have coedited our featured volume … but young enough to be at home on Zoom — where she is frequently a featured presenter on the library’s virtual Bookworm programs. Why not take a chance and register today?