Thursday, March 29 – Museum of Biblical Art and Grolier Club

Museum of Biblical Art

2:30 pm

Moderator: Gerald Cloud, Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego

Nicholas Dames, Columbia University: “The Birth of Speed-Reading: Ocular Physiology and Popular Fiction in the 1890s”

Willa Z. Silverman, Pennsylvania State University: “A Bibliophilic Bestseller: The Histoire des quatre fils Aymon (1883)”

Phillip Dennis Cate, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey: “‘After Nature’: A New Genre of Photo-Mechanical Illustration in France, 1888-1905”

Museum of Biblical Art

4 pm

 

Display of the American Bible Society's collection of Bibles illustrated by Gustave Doré (1832-1883); Presentations by the Society's own curator, Liana Lupas, and by Wadsworth Atheneum curator Eric M. Zafran. Private viewing of exhibitions in the Museum's galleries.

Grolier Club

6 pm

 

Registration
Welcome: Eriz Holzenberg, Grolier Club
Reception and Viewing of Illustrating the Good Life: The Pissarros' Eragny Press, 1894-1914 Remarks by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith, Providence College, curator of the exhibition

 

Friday, March 30 – Fales Library, New York University

9 am

 

Registration

Welcome: Carol Mandel, New York University

9:30 am

 

John Sutherland, University College London and California Institute of Technology: “The True Birth of the Bestseller”; introduced by Mike Kelly, Fales Library, New York University

11 am

Marie E. Korey, Robertson Davies Library, Massey College, University of Toronto:  “Speculative Ventures: The Activities of the House of Vizetelly”; introduced by Peter Trippi, Fine Art Connoisseur

Lunch on your own

2 pm

Moderator: Sigrid Anderson Cordell, Harvard University
Carol Armbruster, Library of Congress: “Reprint Publishers and the Making of French Bestsellers in the United States”
David McClay, National Library of Scotland: “Samuel Smiles, John Murray, and Self Help: A Nineteenth-Century Bestseller”
Frederick Nesta, Lingnan University, Hong Kong:  “The Myth of the Triple-Header Monster: The Economics of the Three-volume Novel”

Exhibition viewing: Nothing New: The Persistence of the Bestseller

3:45 pm

Moderator: A. V. Seaton, International Research Centre in Tourism, University of Bedfordshire

Eric M. Zafran, Wadsworth Atheneum:  “Edgar Allen Poe and Gustave Doré – The Raven of 1883”

Lesley Ginsberg, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs: “The McGuffey's Readers as Nineteenth-Century American Bestsellers”

Patricia Mainardi, Graduate Center, CUNY, and Brooklyn College, CUNY: “The Invention of the Comic Book”

5 pm

 

Reception

 

Saturday, March 31 – Morgan Library & Museum

10 am 

 

Registration
Welcome: John Bidwell, Morgan Library & Museum and Bibliographical Society of America

           

10:30 am

 

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University: “‘Packaging’ and Marketing the Bestseller”; introduced by John Bidwell

11:30 am

 

Michael Winship, University of Texas at Austin : “Two Early American Bestsellers: Rowson's Charlotte Temple and Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin”

 

Lunch on your own

2:30 pm

Moderator: Deidre C. Stam, Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University
August A. Imholtz, Jr., Readex Digital, Publications Co-chair and Past-president, Lewis Carroll Society of North America: “Bestsellers and Worstsellers: Lewis Carroll's Alice Books Contrasted with His Sylvie and Bruno Novels”
Claire W. Putala, Oswego University: “Collecting ‘Old’ Bestsellers: Eliza Wright Osborne and Her Library”
Michelle Kaiserlian, Indiana University: “From High to Low: The Dissemination of the Illustrated Rubáiyát in Great Britain and the United States ”

Exhibition viewing: Victorian Bestsellers

4:30 pm

 

Margaret D. Stetz, University of Delaware: “The Victorian Book Goes to Hollywood”; introduced by Linda Gertner Zatlin, Morehouse College

5:15 pm

 

Closing Remarks: Terry Belanger, University of Virginia

5:30 pm

 

Reception