Rare Book School at UVA

I’m just back from another great week in Charlottesville, VA at Rare Book School.  Founded in 1983 at Columbia University, it has been at UVA since 1992.  Not just for librarians, Rare Book School offers week-long classes, primarily in the summer, to those interested in all aspects of Rare Books…classes which are taught by experts in their fields.  Students include librarians, dealers in antiquarian books, book collectors, conservators, teachers, and students (professional or avocational) of the history of books and printing.  Classes are small (usually about 12 students) and entry is competitive, so I was excited to get my acceptance letter for Printed Books Since 1800, the natural sequential class following my last summer’s class,The Printed Book to 1800. 

The class was taught by Katherine Reagan, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Cornell University, and Tom Congalton, owner of Between the Covers Rare Books in Gloucester City, NJ.  Having two instructors with very different perspectives on Rare Books was both interesting and informative, and made for lively discussions.  I was in class with students from Colorado, California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Florida, New York, and Connecticut, including librarians, rare book dealers, professors, graduate students, and private collectors.  We examined books printed from 1800 to the present, and talked about paper, bindings, book jackets, editions, condition, printers and publishers, the literary line of descent, buying and selling antiquarian and rare books (and other items), and looked at lots of examples of each.

Evening lectures are also a part of the Rare Book School experience, and we had a chance to hear some wonderful lectures regarding some special collections…Edward C. Hirschland on his collection on Chicago history, and Anne-Marie Eze on the rare books in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Rare Book School is one of the best professional opportunities out there, and on top of that is a great deal of fun.

Now back to Davidson’s rare book collection to apply what I’ve learned!

Tied-card proof of Truman Capote’s The Grass Harp

Different printings of Hemingway’s Men without Women

Jackson Pollock dust jacket