Discovering the American Philosophical Society

I’ve known my friend George Gibson since 1979 when he paid a call as a sales rep on Undercover Books, the bookstore I then ran in Cleveland with my sibling and our parents. George, now publishing director of Bloomsbury USA, hosted an event Nov. 1 at the Grolier Club, one of NY’s most distinguished book venues. Located on E. 60th St., off Madison Ave., the Club was founded in 1884, and says it’s “America’s oldest largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts.” The event was held to increase recognition of the American Philosophical Society, an organization even older than the Grolier. The APS was founded in Philadelphia in 1803 by a group that included Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and was from the beginning devoted to natural history and the sciences. Its first librarian was John Vaughan, an ancestor of George’s going back more than five generations. George spoke first, then left the podium to current librarian of the Society, Martin Levitt. He presented a stunning slide show with highlights of their collection, as shown in the accompanying photographs. These include autograph letters of Jefferson; Franklin’s drawings for early aeronautic devices; Charles Darwin’s handwritten title page for The Origin of Species, as Martin pointed out, through Natural Selection; original folios of Audubon’s Birds of America, and in the modern era, photographs of an undersea atomic bomb test. Levitt was followed by Princeton prof Barbara Oberg, whose specialty is the Jefferson papers. I was fascinated to learn about Jefferson’s interest in the languages of native Americans, and his efforts to study and perpetuate them. It was a terrific evening that left me eager to plan a family trip to Philly and a visit to the APS.

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