2025-26 Season Meetings
Tuesday, September 9, 2025: Pre-Season Bonus Event: “The Treasurers of the American Philosophical Society”
The Library & Museum of the American Philosophical Society will offer a unique opportunity to meet its curators and examine manuscripts and printed material from each of its collecting areas. David Gary, Associate Director of Collections, will present on the APS's early American collections, followed by Adrianna Link, the inaugural Curator of the History of Science, and Brian Carpenter, the Curator of Indigenous Materials. The event will be hosted by the Director of the Library & Museum, Michelle McDonald.
The American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, houses 70% of the known Franklin papers; the original journals of the Lewis & Clark expedition; a Dunlap printing of the Declaration of Independence from July 4-5, 1776; an annotated copy of the printing of the U.S. Constitution given to delegates on September 17, 1787, with Franklin's marginalia; Jefferson's instructions and subscription list for Andre Michaux's 1793 western expedition, the only known document containing the signatures of the first four presidents of the United States; and many more of the most significant archival materials documenting American history. For our September special event, Philobiblon Club members will be given the rare chance to view selected highlights of one of Philadelphia's most distinguished institutions.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025: Clarence Wolf, “More than Fifty Years a Bookseller: Further Tales of the Book Trade in Philadelphia and Beyond”
In 1968, Clarence Wolf joined his parents in taking over MacManus Books, a longstanding rare book dealership, then located in a charming building on Irving Street, behind the Library Company. It is the only job he has ever had. His book, Fifty Years a Bookseller: or, The Wolf at Your Door, privately printed in 2022, describes a business world based on a mixture of expertise and trust, where relationships between individuals, good and bad, are key. Mr. Wolf uses the word “character” often in the book to describe both his heroes and villains. Now Mr. Wolf has written a second edition of his book with seven new chapters and additional tales of the fascinating people he met and the remarkable books he was able to acquire and sell through his shop. In his talk to Philobiblon, Mr. Wolf will share stories from his decades in the book trade.
Clarence Wolf is the proprietor of George S. MacManus Company, 12 Water Street, Bryn Mawr, macmanus-rarebooks.com. He has been a member of the Philobiblon Club for decades.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025: Christine Nelson, “Books, Luv, and Envy: The Forty-Year Relationship of Belle da Costa Greene and A. S. W. Rosenbach”
Almost exact contemporaries, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) and A. S. W. Rosenbach (1876–1952) were luminaries of the twentieth-century rare book world. Both were elite collection-builders, savvy professional operators, ambitious self-mythmakers, indefatigable bons vivants, and brilliant bibliophiles. By the late 1920s, Greene was director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, overseeing what was arguably the nation’s finest institutional collection of rare printed books and bindings, medieval manuscripts, and literary and historical manuscripts. Rosenbach was the country’s leading antiquarian bookseller, his firm headquartered in Philadelphia with a New York showroom located not far from the Morgan on East 51st Street. While both were shrewd enough to capitalize upon each other’s stature and connections, they were also fortunate to find, and enjoy, a friendship that matured during the twilight of their lives.
This talk is a preview of new research conducted for Christine’s essay “‘A Race Apart: The Bibliophilic Networks of Belle da Costa Greene and A. S. W. Rosenbach,” to be published in a forthcoming book, edited by Laura Cleaver and Natalia Fantetti, on Belle Greene and the antiquarian book trade.
Christine Nelson is the former Drue Heinz Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum and contributor to J. Pierpont Morgan: Building the Bookman’s Paradise (Scala, 2023). She is the 2025–26 Faith Andrews Fellow at Winterthur.