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Book Notes
A fortnightly publication of the JRBS
Vol. 1, No. 5
August 1–15, 2020
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The Study Hill Club
Great book collectors flourished in Rhode Island in part because the heydey of Providence as a city almost perfectly matched the so-called “golden age” of book collecting in America. A now-forgotten bibliophiles group called the Study Hill Club was formed in 1927, and the documentation of the club’s activities reside largely in the papers of Lawrence Wroth at the John Carter Brown Library. Wroth was the only elected officer (Secretary) of the club during its five years of activity.
By 1927 Wroth was 43 and had been Librarian of the JCB for four years—still a bachelor, and still a relatively new transplant from Baltimore. Most of his major achievements were ahead of him, and several of his elder Providence colleagues became members of the club. Just across the campus’s Main Green was Harry Lyman Koopman, head of the Brown University Library (see Book Notes 1.2). Another elder professional was William E. Foster, who worked downtown as the Librarian of the Providence Public Library (PPL). Foster’s idea was to call the club “The Book Adventurers,” but they eventually named it Study Hill, after the first private library (nearly 200 books) brought to Rhode Island by the reclusive William Blackstone, in 1635. Although this group was not active for long, discussing it creates a convenient way to examine the collectors of that era in Providence individually in these pages.
Koopman spoke at the inaugural meeting on the evening of March 30, 1927, in the Brown Faculty Club (then located in Andrews House at 13 Brown Street). A list of the men invited to that meeting which subsequently became a working document is in the Wroth Papers (reproduced here).
Following is a complete transcription of Koopman’s speech, a typescript of which is in the Wroth Papers. I offer it here in full to give readers both a sense of the time, and also a sense of the considerable aspirational scope of the group (or at least one of its founding members) at the launch of its activity.
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INTRODUCTORY TALK AT A PRELIMINARY CONFERENCE FOR THE FORMATION OF A PROVIDENCE BOOK CLUB
30 March 1927
By Harry Lyman Koopman
This conference is the outcome of many conversations in the course of a series of years, the only result of the said conversations being to confirm the speakers in the belief that a local book club was desirable. But nothing was done until one of us has the inspiration to remember that the only way to resume is to resume, and the only way to begin is to begin. Hence the call sent out to you with the happy response of your presence this evening.
The good old name, “Book Club,” has recently been appropriated by a number of commercial interests who make it their business to purvey the latest literature. It is needless to say that the name originally had no such meaning. It meant, and for our purposes it still means, a group of men who are interested in books as a whole, soul and body, substance and form. In some of us the emphasis will incline to one phase of interest; in others to the opposite phase. Some of us are seasoned in our acquaintance with the book, some possibly have yet to have real book madness of either sort awakened in our hearts. Let us confess frankly we are here first of all for our own personal satisfaction. That satisfaction, however, can be heightened by the reflection that, if we found and carry on a successful book club, it will inevitably mean much to book production, at least in our neighborhood, possibly over a wider field. We shall often speak of printing. Probably that will take up a goodly part of our thought. But we really mean the totality of the material elements going into a book.
It is an interesting fact that the book has a double personality. It is an art object on two planes. For instance, I have here in my hand a little volume which in its contents, being Shakespeare’s sonnets, is an art work of the first grade. It is a product of the Shakespeare Press at Stratford, where I purchased it. Its material form is of so high a quality that this little book becomes an object of high grade in a secondary art. For, after all, the making of books cannot compete with painting, sculpture, and architecture, though in the Middle Ages it was the embodiment of perhaps the choicest of miniature painting, and in its lettering and its decoration it rose very near to the class that we distinguish as painting. So we need not be ashamed of our enthusiasm over the material book, for it brings us into contact with fine art on the same level as that occupied by tapestry, poetry, and jewelry. But it is the privilege of the book to be the carrier of something still more precious, when its contents, as in the case I have just cited, are the highest literature. It is not my purpose to analyze book making and discuss its various features and elements. We may someday have a speaker who may take this for his subject. It is enough at present for us to realize that we have a double interest in the book as contents and as carrier.
As the business of the book club is to produce books, so, before we go further, we might consider what such a program would involve for us. A book club to be functioning at all ought to produce at least one book a year, and one first-rate piece of book production in a year will in the course of a decade put a book club on the map, will, in fact, ensure it present respect and future remembrance. I shall later show you some productions of book clubs.
Now I shall ask you to distinguish between clubs for the publication of literature in certain fields, like the Percy and Chaucer Societies in English literature, the Surtees Society in English history, and, in America, the Narragansett Club, devoted largely to publishing the writings of Roger Williams, the Society of Colonial Wars, which published books appropriate to its name, and the Dunlap Society, which publishes early American plays. While all these in a sense are book clubs, they are not book clubs in our sense. These publications were all issued in dignified form, but the main purpose of the societies is propaganda or the advancement of certain interests. Our devotion is to the book itself. We shall therefore not be limited in our choices of subject matter. It may be in the field of history, though it would seem wise to leave that type of publication to the various societies so well adapted to handle it.
I can see that something more intimate would be appropriate for our type of output, the re-publication of letters, the re-publication some charming book, as, for instance, Locker-Lamson’s “My Confidences,”[[1]] a winsome book, essentially small, which has been issued in a large and clumsy form by a publisher who was looking only for shillings and pence. It is like overwhelming a charming young lady with the cumbersome garments of an Eskimo and expecting her to remain charming. This instance shows that certain types of book call for tribute design. The poems of Keats, the essays of Charles Lamb, are denatured if presented in a large and formidable volume. They demand daintiness, though every book should be readable in type. Some of our members will no doubt be able on demand to submit manuscripts of their own for publication; all told, we have been productive in various fields of literature. We may have neighbors whose books we shall wish to publish. But whatever goes out under the name of the club should be good enough in itself to be recognized as worthy of beautiful presentation. I should think that the club would do well to begin with one book a year. There is no objection to its issuing more if it can secure them of the right quality and provide for their publication.
A very important matter to be settled in connection with our publications is to what extent they shall be put on the market. My own feeling is that we should have two editions, not necessarily otherwise different, but distinguished as members’ copies and copies for the public. It seems to me that the very object of the club will be best promoted if our books have as wide a circulation as possible. But our sense of exclusiveness can be satisfied by members’ numbered copies.
I have spoken of our books as calling for the best book designing at our command. There are three or four ways by which this can be attained. We can place our manuscripts in the hands of a printer with known excellence whose name will be a warrant of the highest type of book design, such a printer as Mr. Updike. We can select a great book designer who has not a press of his own, like Bruce Rogers, and pay him for his work. We can elect to membership some expert bookmen who may be willing to serve on our publication committee. Or we can go ahead and do our best with the talent that we have in our membership. If we are sure of our book design, we need have no hesitation in putting our work into the hands of a well-equipped local press. Mr. Burlingame and I have recently been experimenting with E. L. Freeman and Co. of Central Falls. To speak very frankly, we have had to supply the book design and have had to watch very sharply the production, but I believe that, given proper control, we shall have no difficulty in getting our work done locally however high our ideals.
I come now to the very obvious question: Who is going to foot the bills? It is not likely that we shall often have a book so popular as to pay for itself. Therefore it would seem that individuals or groups in the club would need to serve as sponsors of our publications. The cost of our books might range from a hundred dollars to several thousand. The sponsors would be repaid so far as there were sales to offset expense; but they would have to recognize that for the most part they were entering upon a financially losing venture. Other members of the committee who are not equipped to act as financial sponsors might act as editorial sponsors, preparing manuscript, seeing the book through the press, in other words, making themselves responsible to see that the printer lived up in every respect to the ideals of the designer. This in itself would be no small task and service. It would be desirable that we settle in the spring upon the book that should be published the next fall, and have its manufacture go forward during the summer. It would be well for us to fix upon a local agent who would handle our business as distributor.
One of the first acts, therefore, for the club, if these ideas are approved, must be the naming of a publication committee. It has been suggested that our club might be happiest if functioning with only a single permanent official, namely, a secretary, whose duties shall be to serve as a man of all work and focus all our honors within his personality. If the committee and the functionary can properly be elected only at the next meeting, I believe that this meeting should appoint at least a temporary officer to arrange for the next meeting, and should authorize him to invite other persons besides those who were asked to this meeting. It is for the club to decide upon the extent of its membership, but there would seem no great danger of our becoming unwieldy.
A few words, in closing, on the company in which we shall find ourselves if we organize and get on our way. Doubtless the most distinguished book club in America is the Grolier Club of New York. It was founded by Theodore L. De Vinne, who was the greatest printer of his period. This club has its own fine home in New York, gives various exhibitions in the course of the year, and is addressed by many specialists in book making and the allied arts. Many of its publications are in the John Carter Brown Library. Brander Matthews in his volume Bookbindings Old and New, gives a delightful account of the aims and activities of the Grolier Club. Boston boasts a Club of Odd Volumes and a Bibliophile Society. Cleveland has its Rowfant Club, which has put forth some very choice volumes. There was in New York forty years ago a charming organization, the Book Fellows’ Club. Some of the very finest work done in recent times has come out under the name of the Book Club of California, which has not been afraid to be ambitious. Newark has a Cartaret Book Club, which is apparently an incarnation of that distinguished book lover and connoisseur of books, John Cotton Dana. New Haven has an Acorn Club. There was a volume published in 1897 called American Book Clubs by Adolf Growoll.
In closing this list of book clubs I am reminded of a man who might well be called a book club himself. That is the late Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, who won the admiration of Bruce Rogers for the quality of his work; and certainly that devoted book lover, in a Down East commercial city, himself not a printer but occupying a little shop and directing the activities of a local printer in the same building, may well serve as an inspiration and a guide to such a book club as we might organize in Providence. The series of books published by Mosher forms one of the choicest units sought by collectors. May this evening mark the beginning of a book club whose works a generation hence will be sought with equal fervor!
[1] Frederick Locker-Lamson (1821–1895) was an English civil servant, man of letters and bibliophile. My Confidences was first published in 1896 as a posthumous volume of memoirs edited by his son-in-law. The Rowfant Club of Cleveland was named for Rowfant, Locker-Lamson’s home in Essex. A catalogue of his books, manuscripts and pictures was published by Bernard Quaritch in 1886 and compiled by A.W. Pollard and R. H. Lister.
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