Boston Athenæum

September 24, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. When Samuel Stillman Pierce (1807-1880) opened his store, S.S. Pierce, in 1831 at the corner of Tremont and Court Streets in downtown Boston, he vowed "I may not make money, but I shall make a reputation." Pierce was known as the purveyor of fancy goods and potent libations to Victorian Bostonians. He catered to the carriage trade and created a company that would involve four generations of the Pierce Family in its successful operations. With its own coat of arms adorning a distinctive red label on canned goods, and the largest line of privately packed fancy foods in the world, S.S. Pierce sold its delicacies not only through eight New England stores of its own but also through distributors across the United States and by worldwide mail order. Boston Athenæum members John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. were considered celebrity customers at S.S. Pierce.

A panel discussion at the Boston Athenæum on September 21, 2015 featuring Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty as they address the impact of climate change in Boston and the surrounding areas. The Boston Athenæum has long been a venue for intellectual discourse on leading issues of the day. Once considered purely a scientific subject, global climate change is now recognized as an issue with consequences for a variety of disciplines including law, government and public policy, economics, human rights, and culture. A survey of visual materials of the local natural and built environments in the Athenæum’s special collection shows the dramatic impacts humans have had on the landscape and environment, particularly over the last 200 years. Global climate change will certainly require further changes to our built environment. Please join us for a panel discussion featuring Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty, including Alan Berger, Kerry Emanuel, Markus Buehler, and moderator Cynthia

September 17, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Collecting Shakespeare: The Story of Henry and Emily Folger, founders of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. is the first book-length account of the American success story about Henry (1857–1930) and Emily (1858–1936) Folger, the reclusive Brooklyn couple who founded the Folger Shakespeare Library near the U. S. Capitol in 1932. The library houses 82 First Folios, 275,000 books, 60,000 manuscripts, artwork, and much more related to Shakespeare and his times. The private research institution welcomes 100,000 visitors a year and provides scholars, researchers, professors, and graduate students from around the world with access to the priceless collections stored in underground vaults. The Folgers met at a literary salon and were the first in their families to receive college educations. Henry rose to become president of the Standard Oil Company of New York, that later became Mobil Corporation. Emily earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean studies i

September 16, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. "Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War", a spellbinding work of historical restoration, recounts the courage and audacious duplicity of four remarkable women who played seminal roles in the Civil War. Two working for the Union and two for the Confederacy, these women, until now all but forgotten by history, came from varying backgrounds and regions. Yet each risked everything—money, honor, family connections, and even her life—in order to further the cause in which she adamantly believed. Abbott, who draws on a wealth of primary source material as well as interviews with the women’s descendants, illuminates these interwoven lives with the assured hand of an historian and the narrative grace of a novelist.

February 5, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Shakespeare’s Sonnets comprise the greatest single work of lyric poetry in English, as passionate, daring, intimate, and fiery as any love poems we may encounter. But they are often misunderstood: as W. H. Auden wrote, “more nonsense has been talked and written, more intellectual and emotional energy expended in vain, on the sonnets of Shakespeare than on any other literary work in the world.” Ideas of Order instills pleasure in this extraordinary verse, revealing an underlying narrative within the 154 poems that illuminates the work—providing a guide that inspires a new understanding of this complex masterpiece. Neil L. Rudenstine makes a compelling case for the existence of a dramatic arc within the work through an expert interpretation of the poems in relationship to each other: the jealousies, petty squabbles, reconciliations, discoveries, and longings. The sonnets show us a poet in turmoil who falls for a young man who returns his affections—and the love is utter

February 26, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Killers of the King tells the shocking stories—including the fascinating fates—of the 59 men who signed the death warrant of Charles I of England in 1649. This act not only changed British history forever, but may it very well have reverberated across the ocean to the young British colonies, which more than a hundred years later also rose up against their king to become an independent country known as the United States. When Charles I’s son, Charles II, was restored to the throne in 1660, he set about enacting a deadly wave of retribution against all those responsible for his father’s death. Some of the "regicides"—the killers of the king—pleaded for mercy, while others stoically awaited their sentences. This powerful tale of revenge from the dark heart of England’s past, a unique contribution to seventeenth-century history, Killers of the King tells the incredible story of the men who dared to assassinate a monarch.

March 10, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Blood on the Bayou: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the Trans-Mississippi takes a well-known story of the struggle for control of the Mississippi River in the American Civil War, and recasts it as a contest for control of African-American populations. The Emancipation Proclamation may have freed the slaves, but the task of actually moving these liberated people within Union borders and directing their labor to the benefit of the Union fell to the Federal army and navy. This book shows how the campaign to reduce Rebel forts west of the river also involved the creation of a black army of occupation and a remaking of the social and political landscape of Louisiana and the nation. The longer the military campaigns in the Mississippi Valley dragged on, the more Federal officials could feed liberated slaves into the system. No matter the outcome of the war, the Federal government set out to break slavery—forever.

March 23, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Anyone who has spent time in New England will recognize the century-old buildings that Maureen Meister will discuss in a slide lecture based upon her new book—the first comprehensive study of Arts and Crafts architecture in the region. Focusing on the 1890s through the 1920s, she will explain how a group of Boston architects and craftsmen encountered English Arts and Crafts theorists, including John Ruskin and William Morris, and produced exquisite works of their own. Among the architects were Ralph Adams Cram, Lois Lilley Howe, Charles Maginnis, and R. Clipston Sturgis. They were conservative in some respects, promoting designs based on historical precedent and the region's heritage, while they also were forward-looking, blending Arts and Crafts values with Progressive Era idealism. Their legacy is apparent in landmarks honored today in cities and towns across New England.

March 19, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. In the early 1870s, local children begin disappearing from the working class neighborhoods of Boston. Several return home bloody and bruised after being tortured, while others never came back. With the city on edge, authorities believe the abductions are the handiwork of a psychopath, until they discover that their killer—fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy—is barely older than his victims. The criminal investigation that follows sparks a debate among the world’s most revered medical minds and will have a long-lasting impact on the judicial system and medical consciousness for decades. The historical novel, The Wilderness of Ruin is a riveting tale of gruesome murder and depravity, but at its heart it depicts a great American city divided by class, a chasm that widens in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1872. Roseanne Montillo brings Gilded Age Boston to glorious life—from the genteel cobble stone streets of Beacon Hill to the squalid, overcrowded tenements of Southie—and

April 13, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. The Boston Athenæum is beloved for its tradition of welcoming well-behaved dogs into its beautiful interiors. In this Royal Oak Society lecture, Gareth Williams will discuss the role of dogs in historic, English country houses. Whilst many people focus on humans depicted in portraits upon English country house walls, it is the four-legged canine occupants of stately homes that are considered de rigueur members of a countryside retreat. From gaunt greyhounds shown in early English tapestries to pampered pooches whose beds have the same Colefax & Fowler chintz as their mistress’ sofas, dogs in England’s country houses command a place in history themselves. Depictions of hunting dogs and family pets abound in English country house collections including sculptures, textiles, tapestries, plaster work, and on tableware or porcelain. Country house doggie accoutrements include splendidly wrought silver and gold collars, dog bowls, and kennels designed by architects, and some b

May 5, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Jeffrey Henderson, in his lecture The Loeb Classics for a Digital Age, will reflect on the durability and adaptability of the works of the Loeb Classical Library. Over the millennia, these works have been adapted to new vehicles and systems of reference and organization. The new digital version is the latest of many previous forms: the Greek oral tradition was first captured in writing around the eighth century BCE, after which it was committed to handwritten scroll, handwritten codex, to printed codex, now to the computer in the twenty-first century, and surely to more media in years to come. Each new medium has resulted in unanticipated effects as writers and readers explored its capabilities and discovered its potential, and so it will be with the Loeb Classical Library in its new digital form.

April 30, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. In this book talk, Kirstin Downey, author of Isabella: The Warrior Queen, will speak about Isabella of Castile, the Queen of Spain who became one of the most influential female rulers in history. Just as Isabella was a queen in a world of kings, female members of the Athenæum have navigated what librarian Charles Knowles in the Athenæum Centenary called “a man’s institution” for the majority of its history. (Barbara Adams Hebard tackles this topic in her essay, "The Role of Women at the Boston Athenæum" in The Boston Athenæum Bicentennial Essays, which illuminates the hidden history of female contributions to the Athenæum since its inception.) Isabella’s life is not so hidden, sponsoring major historical events such as Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World and the Spanish Inquisition. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world, in which millions of people in two hemispheres speak Spanish and practice Catholicism. Usin

May 14, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Since 1922, English-language readers have been able to leap into the prose of Proust thanks to translator C. K. Scott Moncrieff, who wrestled with Proust’s seven-volume masterpiece—published as Remembrance of Things Past—until his death in 1930. In her book, Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator, Jean Findlay reveals aspects of Scott Moncrieff’s life which have remained hidden behind the genius of the man whose reputation he helped build. Catholic and homosexual; a partygoer who was lonely deep down; secretly a spy in Mussolini’s Italy; publicly a debonair man of letters; a war hero described as “offensively brave,” whose letters from the front are remarkably cheerful—Scott Moncrieff was a man of his moment, thriving on paradoxes and extremes. In Chasing Lost Time, Findlay gives us a vibrant, moving portrait of the brilliant Scott Moncrieff, and of the era—changing fast and forever—in which he shone.

June 3, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Prize-winning historian Jonathan Schneer investigates Winston Churchill and the role his cabinet played during the war in his book, Ministers at War. Churchill depended on a team of powerful ministers to manage the war effort as he rallied a beleaguered nation. Selecting men from across the political spectrum—from fellow Conservative Anthony Eden to leaders of the opposing Labor Party such as Clement Atlee—Churchill assembled a War Cabinet that would balance competing interests and bolster support for his national coalition government. The group possessed a potent blend of talent, ambition, and egotism, but Churchill masterfully kept the ministers’ rivalries and political challenges in check, paving the way for Britain’s victory.

July 21, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered is an "absorbing" (The Wall Street Journal), "sharp and moving" (Kirkus, starred review) biography of the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution. Laura Auricchio looks past the storybook hero who cast aside family and fortune to advance the transcendent aims of liberty and justice commemorated in America’s towns, streets, and parks that bear his name. Auricchio gives us a rich portrait of the man, from birth to death a man driven by dreams of glory and felled by tragic, human weaknesses.

July 13, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. In Thomas Hart Benton and the Modern American Woman, Austen Bailly will speak about how American artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) pictured twentieth-century female experiences in America and saw American women as a means to make the mythic modern in his art. Benton met his Italian-born wife Rita Piacenza around 1917 on the heels of his early involvement with motion pictures in Fort Lee, New Jersey—America’s “first Hollywood.” The movies inspired Benton to chart a new artistic course to compete with the drama and power of movies. Rita, imagined as a glamorous leading lady in Benton’s self-portrait from about 1924, was key to the artist’s vision for presenting himself as new American art star. Like Hollywood directors, Benton cast women as leading and supporting players in authentic American stories and recognized their roles in American myths.

June 10, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Islandology is a fast-paced, fact-filled comparative essay in critical topography and cultural geography that cuts across different cultures and argues for a world of islands. Written by Marc Shell in view of the melting of the world's great ice islands, Islandology shows not only new ways that we think about islands but also why and how we think by means of them.

June 11, 2015 at the Boston Athenæum. Learn more about this American artist by joining Karen Corsano and Daniel Williman for a discussion of their book, John Singer Sargent and His Muse: Painting Love and Loss. This sensitive and compelling biography sheds new light on John Singer Sargent’s art through an intimate history of his family, especially of his niece and muse, Rose-Marie Ormond. Between 1906 and 1912, John Singer Sargent documented the idyllic teenage summers of Rose-Marie and his own deepening affection for her serene beauty and good-hearted, candid charm. When his niece died tragically in a bombed church vault, Sargent expressed his grief on canvas: he made his last murals for the Boston Public Library a cryptic memorial to Rose-Marie and her husband, Robert. The book braids together the lives and families of Rose-Marie, Robert, and John Sargent while drawing on a rich trove of letters, diaries, journals, and the Athenæum Archive.

Stephen Kinzer discussing his work at the Boston Athenaeum on February 25, 2014.

December 9, 2013 at the Boston Athenæum. Born in 1918 in San Diego, Ted Williams would spend most of his life disguising his Mexican heritage. During his 22 years with the Boston Red Sox, Williams electrified crowds across America—and shocked them, too: his notorious clashes with the press and fans threatened his reputation. Yet while he was a God in the batter’s box, he was profoundly human once he stepped away from the plate. Mr. Bradlee—the only biographer to have full access to Williams’s personal papers, letters, and home movies—has spent ten years gleaning new details about the athlete’s hardscrabble childhood; his spectacular baseball career; his years as a “Top Gun’’ pilot in two wars; a private life marked by affairs, explosion and dysfunction; and finally, the macabre cryonics affair that followed his death.