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Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries in the United States, was founded in 1807 by members of the Anthology Society, a group of fourteen Boston gentlemen who had joined together in 1805 to edit The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review. Their purpose was to form "an establishment similar to that of the Athenaeum and Lyceum of Liverpool in Great Britain; combining the advantages of a public library [and] containing the great works of learning and science in all languages." The library and Art Gallery, established in 1827, were soon flourishing, and grew rapidly, both by purchase of books and art and by frequent gifts. For nearly half a century the Athenaeum was the unchallenged center of intellectual life in Boston, and by 1851 had become one of the five largest libraries in the United States. Today its collections comprise over half a million volumes, with particular strengths in Boston history, New England state and local history, biography, English and American literature, and the fine and decorative arts. The Athenaeum supports a dynamic art gallery, and sponsors a lively variety of events such as lectures and concerts. It also serves as a stimulating center for discussions among scholars, bibliophiles, and a variety of community interest groups.break

http://www.bostonathenaeum.org

  • After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World

    Tue, Nov 8, 2005
    The distinguished historian A.N. Wilson charts Britain's rise to world dominance. In his much anticipated sequel to the classic *The Victorians*, he describes how, in little more than a generation, Britain's power and influence in the world virtually dissolved. Wilson presents a panoramic view of an era, stretching from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, to the dawn of the Cold War in the early 1950s. He offers riveting accounts of the savagery of World War I and the world-altering upheaval of the Communist Revolution and explains Britain's role in shaping the destiny of the Middle East, casting a new light on the World War II years. Wilson's perspective is not confined to the trenches of the battlefield and the halls of parliament: he also examines the parallel story of the beginnings of Modernism, looking at novelists, philosophers, poets, and painters to see what they reveal about the activities of the politicians, scientists, and generals. Blending military, political, social, and cultural history, A.N. Wilson offers an absorbing portrait of the decline of one of the world's great powers.
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  • Emma at Home: Lady Hamilton and Her "Attitudes"

    Thu, Mar 31, 2005
    John Wilton-Ely lectures on the effervescent and much celebrated performance artist, Lady Emma Hamilton, whose "attitudes" made her a phenomenon all across 18th century Europe. This lecture is presented in conjunction with the Royal Oak Foundation.
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  • Stewart O'Nan's The Good Wife

    Thu, Apr 7, 2005
    Stewart O'Nan, author of The Speed Queen and A Prayer for the Dying, discusses his newest novel, The Good Wife. On a clear winter night in upstate New York, two young men break into a house believing it is empty. It isn't, and within minutes an old woman is dead and the house is in flames. Soon after, the men are caught by the police. Across the county, a phone rings in a darkened bedroom, waking a pregnant woman. It is her husband. He wants her to know that he and his friend have gotten themselves into a little trouble. So Patty Dickerson's old life ends and a strange new one begins. At once a love story and a portrait of a woman discovering her own strength, The Good Wife follows Patty through the twenty-eight years of her husband's incarceration as she raises her son, navigates a system that has no place for her, and braves the scorn of her community. Compassionate and unflinching, The Good Wife illuminates a marriage and a family tested to the limits of endurance.
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  • North Shore Boston: Country Houses of Essex County

    Tue, Oct 4, 2005
    Pamela Wilkinson Fox discusses more than 50 great houses in Boston's North Shore, designed by such architects as McKim, Mead & White, the Olmsted Brothers, Peabody & Stearns, and Ogden Codman. Since the mid-19th century, well-to-do Bostonians have fled the sweltering city streets for the cooling breezes, gently rolling hills, and rugged coastline of the fabled North Shore. From prestigious seaside communities such as Nahant, Marblehead, and Prides' Crossing to inland villages such as Wenham, Topsfield, and Ipswich, elegant country mansions arose, growing ever grander and more elaborate as the Age of Elegance progressed. Exclusive enclaves such as the Myopia Hunt Club, Eastern Yacht Club, and the Essex Country Club endowed the North Shore with a summer playground where Boston Brahmins mingled with Midwestern moguls (Henry Clay Frick, Richard Crane, and Edwin Swift), US Presidents (William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge), and artists and authors, including Maxfield Parrish, Edward Hopper, and Rudyard Kipling.
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  • Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature

    Thu, Oct 13, 2005
    Lewis Dabney lectures on his new book, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature. From the Jazz Age through the McCarthy Era, Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) stood at the center of the American cultural scene. In his own youth a crucial champion of the young Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wilson went on to write three classics of literary and intellectual history (Axel's Castle, To the Finland Station, and Patriotic Gore), searching reportage, and criticism that has outlasted many of its subjects. Wilson documented his unruly private life, a formative love affair with Edna St Vincent Millay, a tempestuous marriage to Mary McCarthy, and volatile friendships with Fitzgerald and Vladimir Nabokov, among others, in fiction and journals, but Lewis Dabney is the first writer to integrate the life and the work.
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  • Crack in the Edge of the World: The 1906 CA Earthquake

    Thu, Nov 3, 2005
    Simon Winchester discusses the Great California Earthquake of 1906, which he has written about extensively in his new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. Simon Winchester, who has brought the unlikely subject of geology to the literary forefront in his national bestsellers Krakatoa and The Map That Changed the World, now shines his literary light on the most dramatic natural calamity in US history in A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. Using the devastating 7.9 quake that struck the bustling city of San Francisco as a narrative springboard, Winchester offers a panoramic blend of history and science that captures the "savage interruption" and its destructive aftermath with gripping immediacy. Winchester explores the global geology that jolted the Earth awake on the fateful day and suggests why it certainly will happen again.
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  • George Washington's God

    Thu, Mar 9, 2006
    Michael Novak, one of the country's leading conservative thinkers, offers the first in-depth look at the religious life of George Washington. Washington has long been viewed as the patron saint of secular government, but Novak's new book *Washington's God* reveals that it was Washington's strong faith in divine Providence that gave meaning and force to his monumental life. Narrowly escaping a British trap during the Battle of Brooklyn, Washington did not credit his survival to courage or tactical expertise; he blamed himself for marching his men into seemingly certain doom and marveled at the Providence that delivered them. Throughout his career, Washington remained convinced that America's liberty was dependent on faithfulness to God's will and trust in Providence. *Washington's God* shows him not only as a man of resource, strength, and virtue, but also as a man with deeply religious values. This new presentation of Washington will bring him into today's debates about the role of faith in government and will challenge much we thought we knew about the inner life of the father of our country.
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  • New York World: Graphic Art on Sunday (1898-1911)

    Tue, Dec 6, 2005
    Before the age of electronic media, Saturday morning television, and weekend getaways, there was Joseph Pulitzer's *New York World* newspaper. The Sunday edition in particular was a visual feast of color caricatures, full-page cartoons, disaster drawings, fictional illustrations, hand-lettered typography, weird science, halftone photographs, maps and more amidst the graphic, often muckraking news. For *The World on Sunday*, Baker and his coauthor and wife, Margaret Brentano, have selected 144 of the finest examples of period reporting, bold and playful graphic design, comic strips, and society pieces. Baker's introductory essay argues for the significance and beauty of Pulitzer's paper, and Brentano's detailed captions and notes accompany the colorful reproductions throughout the volume. Athenæum member Nicholson Baker has published seven novels and three works of nonfiction, including *Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper*, which won the National Book critics Circle Award for nonfiction in 2001. He is a regular contributor to *The New Yorker* and the *New York Review of Books*.
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  • Race and Place

    Tue, Mar 2, 2004
    Ted Landsmark discusses how demographic and educational changes affect Boston's near-term future, and the unanticipated ways in which our cultural identities are evolving. The formation of racial and ethnic identities were key aspects of 20th century American culture. As traditional racial dichotomies dissolve in the 21st century, some new, and some very old, elements of cultural identity are taking precedence in American life: artisanry, class, education, and a sense of place are emerging as significant shapers of identity. Even as media and commercial homogeneity aggregate and level our differences, immigration and rediscovered cultural roots are churning our perceptions of who we believe we are as Americans. Boston, a city generally viewed as both a portal for new populations and as a staid community where relatively few ethnic or racial minorities achieve high levels of political or cultural visibility, is undergoing some of the largest demographic and educational changes in its history.
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  • Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living (1900-1939)

    Thu, Mar 11, 2004
    Virginia Nicholson explores the way of life of the Bohemian artists of the early 20th century - the majority of them artists, poets, writers, and composers - who were brave enough to jettison Victorian conformity and to invent a whole new way of living. Rebels and free spirits, they pioneered a domestic revolution, carrying idealism and creativity into every aspect of daily life. From Dylan Thomas to Robert Graves, Katherine Mansfield to Dora Carrington, they rejected tea parties, chaperones, monogamy, and mahogany. Deaf to disapproval, they painted, danced, and wrote poetry with passionate intensity, they experimented with homosexuality and open marriages, and often sacrificed comfortable homes to take to the road or to move into Spartan garrets. Yet their choice of a free life led all too often to poverty, hunger, addictions, and even death. This lecture brings to life the flamboyant, eccentric pioneers to whom we owe so many of our freedoms today.
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