October Brings Two Winship Lectures

Front facade of Houghton Library

Portrait of Samuel Johnson from his Works, 1787. 2003J-SJ806We are preparing for two George Parker Winship lectures this semester, one by Robert De Maria (25 October 2012) and the other by Roger Stoddard (11 October 2012). These will be the 95th and 96th lectures that were inaugurated under the fund established by the John Barnard Associates. Stoddard’s topic is “How I Found the Poets and How I Left Them: A Librarian’s Apology for Bibliography” and De Maria’s is “The History of the Complete Works of Samuel Johnson: The First Two Hundred Years.”

Over the years a number of distinguished librarians, bibliographers and scholars have spoken to a Harvard audience on a variety of library-related matters of continuing importance. The 7th Winship lecture was delivered by the distinguished American antiquarian bookseller Bernard M. Rosenthal on 8 April 1976 and it was later published as “Cartel, Clan, or Dynasty?: The Olschkis and the Rosenthals, 1859-1976” in the Harvard Library Bulletin 25.4 (1977), 381-388. Twenty-five years later Rosenthal has published a reminiscence of his cousin, the Florentine publisher Alessandro Olschki (1925-2011), in La Bibliofilia 1014.1 (2012), 33-37 and his Winship lecture/Harvard Library Bulletin article has been translated into Italian as “Cartello, clan o dinastia? Gli Olschki e i Rosenthal 1859-1976,” 39-59.

[Thanks to William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library, for contributing this post.]