This recent exhibition measures Jane Austen’s growing fame at fifty-year intervals: ending in 1825, 1875, 1925, 1975, and 2025. In the bibliographical tradition of The Grolier Club, the curators constructed a timeline for Jane Austen using books and paper collectables. The result surprised visitors as much: rare first editions and manuscripts mix irreverently with popular reprintings, giveaways, movie posters, illustrations, theater playbills, and all manner of paper ephemera. This kaleidoscopic mix reflects Jane Austen’s heady reputation as a revered canonical author whose books simultaneously appeal as accessible, engaging fiction—studied in schools while also enjoyed as “chick lit.”
Mary Crawford was the co-curator of the Grolier Club exhibition Paper Jane: 250 Years of Austen, which ran from December 4 th through Valentine’s Day of 2026. She first read Jane Austen’s novels during college and began collecting works by and about Austen in 1980, shortly after marrying into a devoted, multi-generational book-collecting family.
Mary is a Life Member of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) and a 20-year member of the Grolier Club of New York, where she currently serves as Treasurer and sits on the Executive Council. Paper Jane is Mary’s second exhibition; in 2010, she curated bi-coastal exhibitions related to the 20th-century British writer Mary Webb at the Grolier Club and Stanford University Libraries. Mary and her husband, Bruce, co-authored the two-volume Mary Webb: Neglected Genius, which was published to coincide with those exhibitions. Mary recently retired as Senior Vice President from Morgan Stanley, where she founded the Crawford-Hogan-Wang Group, a financial planning and portfolio management team serving Silicon Valley families.
This meeting is online only. A link will be sent to members and guests on the day of the meeting.
A new exhibition on view at Glickman Library this winter is part conceptual art installation and part bibliophilic entertainment, featuring a collection of books that do not really exist. On view during library hours from January 20 through April 18, Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books presents an alternative library that encourages speculation on some of the major “what ifs” of bibliographic history.
Curated by Baxter Society member Reid Byers from his unique collection, the exhibition includes more than 100 imaginary books: lost texts that have no surviving example, unfinished books, and fictive works that exist only in story. In this post-structuralist art project, presented with a dry wit, all of the “books” are simulacra meticulously created by Byers with a team of printers, bookbinders, artists, and calligraphers.
Presented jointly by the Baxter Society and the Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts, the exhibition will be on view in the seventh floor gallery of the Glickman Library. Highlights include William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Won, the lost sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost,of which no known copies survive; Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, which vanished when his wife’s suitcase was stolen from a train at the Gare de Lyon, Paris, in 1922, never to be recovered; and the Necronomicon, a magical textbook sealed in a strongbox as a precaution. An accompanying book is published by Oak Knoll Press and Le Club Fortsas in Paris.
Lost Books
On view are a wide range of lost books that we know once existed but of which no examples now survive. Some were intentionally destroyed, such as Lord Byron’s memoirs, which he said detailed “the evils, moral and physical, of true dissipation.”
Other works lost, but shown here, are such risqué tales as Sir Richard Burton’s translation of The Scented Garden, which was burned at his death by his wife Isabel. The second book of Aristotle’s On Comedy was lost in the late Middle Ages when the last surviving copy was burned in an Italian monastery in 1327. Other tragic losses include philosopher Pierre Abélard’s Poèmes pour Héloïse and the beautifully bound Poems of Sappho.
Fictive Books
Fictive books exist only in story and never had any physical form of existence whatsoever. Two such books on view, featuring striking purple covers, are The Songs of the Jabberwock, first mentioned in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, with mirror-image writing; and the dark farce The Lady Who Loved Lightning by Clare Quilty, first mentioned by Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita. Magical books include The History and Practice of English Magic by Jonathan Strange and The Necronomicon, the most notorious of the Levantine grimoires (or magical textbooks). Mentioned in many works by H.P. Lovecraft, legend claims that its use results in a horrible death at the claws of invisible monsters. Though we know such fears are silly, it has been kept sealed in a strongbox since the Crickle accident in 1968.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, displayed on a tablet using a massive interstellar infrastructure, is a guidebook for the entire universe and the most useful book ever written, even when it is wildly inaccurate.
Visiting The Exhibition
Glickman Family Library, 314 Forest Ave, Portland ME 04103. Exhibitions are open to the public free of charge. 207-780-4270. https://usm.maine.edu/library/
Publication & Programming
A catalogue titled Imaginary Books is available for $65 through Oak Knoll Press. The exhibition will host related free public programs, including lunchtime exhibition tours on Thursdays in February, Fridays in March, and Saturdays in April, all at 1pm, and a special lecture on “Collecting the Imaginary.” Details can be found at http://www.baxtersociety.org.
About the Baxter Society
The Baxter Society was founded in 1984: its object is to advance the quality and diversity of private and public libraries, to promote excellence in the arts pertaining to the history, design, and production of books, and to provide a supportive environment for those interested in the creation, preservation, and collection of books.
About the Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts
The Center for Book Arts celebrates the innovative and engaging nature of book arts through lectures and workshops by national and regional book artists, and through exhibits of artists’ books.
Bob Macdonald and Reid Byers (photo Rosemary Reed)
On Friday December 5, Robert F. Macdonald was elected to be the new President of the Baxter Society. He replaces Reid Byers, President for the last three years. Bob has practiced law for thirty-five years and is a shareholder at Bernstein Shur, one of the largest law firms in New England. He attended the London School of Economics and Political Science (1986), Colby College (B.A. 1987), and the University of Maine School of Law (J.D. 1990).
A member of the Grolier Club, Bob grew up in a family of collectors, his parents being passionate collectors of 18th and 19th century Staffordshire pottery. They also collected art and furniture, but their primary focus was always on early English pottery. Bob attributes his own collecting malady chiefly to their influence.
He began collecting Maine history in 1994: books, pamphlets, maps, and other ephemera focusing on the role of what is now Maine in the American Revolution. He collects Kenneth Roberts, John Josselyn, General John Bourgoyne, Moses Greenleaf, Fannie Eckstorm, John Springer, Ralph Waldo Emerson; John Neal; Reverend Thomas Smith, Reverend Jonathan Fisher; and publications by the de Burians of Bangor, Maine; as well as books from the collections of Frank Cutter Deering and Francis O’Brien each of whom were distinguished Maine collectors. He recently acquired an early newspaper which provided the first printed report on the ‘Burning of Falmouth/Portland’ on October 18, 1775. In addition to Maine materials, his collecting interests include English Colour Plate Books with plates by Rowlandson, Cruikshank and others, and NC Wyeth illustrated books.
Bob has served on the Boards of the Osher Map Library Foundation, Opera Maine, Bridgton Highlands Country Club, the Cumberland Club, and the Portland Public Library.
Outgoing President Reid Byers reported :
In 2022, the Board met, and we set some high goals. They included:
1. returning from COVID to live meetings, while still retaining Zoom access in the form of hybrid meetings.
2. meeting nine times a year, including six or seven lectures each year
3. resuming the awarding of a Society prize for the Book Arts
4. resuming the organization of public book exhibitions
5. resuming Society publications
6. performing a formal membership review
7. expanding and diversifying membership, especially younger people
8. redoing the bylaws
9. regularizing our corporate status
10. misc goals, including interviews with our senior members, especially our founders.
Over the last three years, we have made good on some of these:
Zip, BB, Bridget, Scott, and I performed a membership review, and cleaned the books.
The Society passed a revision of our bylaws that removed our membership limit.
In the last three years, we have had 27 meetings, 19 of which were lectures, the balance visits, parties, show-and-tells. The meeting schedule is posted with the minutes.
We awarded the first Baxter Book Arts Prize to Rachel Church in 2023.
We hosted Scott Vile’s great exhibition on the work of Ascensius Press, which was our first book exhibition in thirty years, and we have another coming next month.
We celebrated our 40th anniversary in conjunction with the Book Club of Washington and their 40th anniversary.
And we increased our membership. In 2020, we had 42 members, today we have 94, in large part due, I believe, to our insistence on having hybrid meetings whenever possible.
Things we have not done include resuming publications, and founders’ interviews, and a review of our corporate status, some of which, I am happy to say, are items that are of special interest to Bob Macdonald.
It has been a privilege and a pleasure to serve as President of this fine group, and I thank you for the opportunity.
And that concludes my report.
Mr. Byers will continue as Vice-President for the coming year.
The Board of Directors is proud to announce the Winter and Spring Schedule for the Baxter Society.
December 5 – The Annual Meeting and Holiday Carouse, 5 pm for hors d'oeuvres at the Cumberland Club at 116 High St. in Portland. The parking lot is located at 129 Spring Street Place. In person only.
January 27 - Curator Reid Byers, Baxter member, will speak at the opening of his exhibition, Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Books Found Only in Other Books. Top floor, Glickman Library. In person only. 5 pm.
February 18 - Baxter Annual Show and Tell: our yearly round-robin gives everyone a chance to share a treasured book. 6 pm. On Zoom only.
March 25 - Curator Mary Crawford will speak on her Grolier Club exhibition "Paper Jane: 250 Years of Austen", marking the 250th anniversary of the author's birth. 6 pm. On Zoom only.
April 8 - Dr. Milly Budny, director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, with speak on "Bembino, a New Multi-Lingual Font." The beautiful new font, supporting fifty-seven languages, is to be made freely available to the literary community this spring by the RGME. At the offices of Bernstein-Shur and on Zoom.
May 13 - Dr. Megan Cook, Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Associate Professor of Literature and Co-Chair of English at Colby College, will speak on "Blame It On Caxton: Early Modern Printers and Their Middle English Texts". At the offices of Bernstein-Shur and on Zoom.
The Baxter Society will meet next on November 12th at 6:00 pm, at the Glickman Library (314 Forest Ave, Portland ME) and on Zoom.
Jenna Ware, Director of the Crane Museum of Papermaking, will be our speaker and will discuss “Preserving Papermaking History: The Crane Museum Collection.” Her talk will explore the rich legacy of Crane papermaking, tracing its evolution from traditional rag-based handmade paper to modern machine manufacturing, and highlighting Crane’s pivotal role in producing secure currency paper for the U.S. Treasury, offering insights into the craftsmanship and innovation behind its production. We will get an up-close look at anti-counterfeiting technologies used in currency paper, alongside a display of historic documents and artifacts from the Crane Museum Collection.
Peter and Donna Thomas, book artists from Santa Cruz, California, will speak at a joint meeting of the Baxter Society and the Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts at 5:00 pm on Wednesday October 8, in the University Event Room on the 7th floor of Glickman Library, at 314 Forest Ave. in Portland.
Peter and Donnawork collaboratively, making both editions and one-of-a-kind books. They make the paper, print, illustrate, and bind their books, combining the precision of the fine press aesthetic with the structural creativity found in contemporary artists’ books. Between 2009 and 2019, they made four cross-country road trips, traveling in their artistic tiny home on wheels as the “Wandering Book Artists,”
teaching classes and giving talks about the book arts as they visited universities and community-based book arts centers around the country. They are authors of More Making Books by Hand, and editors of 1000 Artists’ Books, and in 2021, The Legacy Press published a descriptive bibliography of their work: Peter and Donna Thomas: Bibliography, 1974–2020.
Their topic will be “Making Books by Hand in the Digital Age.” The meeting will be held in-person only.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus Richard Kopley, Penn State DuBois, will open the Baxter Society year for 2025-2026 with a lecture based on his brilliant new book, Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, just published by the University of Virginia Press.
The lecture will take place at Glickman Library, USM, at 6:00 on September 10, and on Zoom, the link to be sent to all members and their guests, on the day, by email.
The story of his discovery of a new trove of unknown Poe documents make this an exciting and surprising tale.
The events scheduled for next Autumn at the Baxter meetings have been scheduled:
September 10 – Richard Kopley, author of Edgar Allan Poe, a Life, will speak on the remarkable discovery that sparked his brilliant biography of Poe.
October 8 – Peter and Donna Thomas, papermakers, book artists, and authors, will speak at a joint meeting of the Baxter Society and the Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts.
November 12 – Jenna Ware, of the Crane Museum of Papermaking, “Preserving Papermaking History: The Crane Museum Collection.”
December 5 – The Annual Meeting and Holiday Carouse, hosted by the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, in Portland.
The first Baxter Society exhibition in several decades will open on the evening of May 28, at 6:00 pm in the University Events Room of Glickman Library.
Long-time Baxter member Scott Vile will speak on “Printing for Four Decades” in describing his work on the Ascensius Press. The Press offers design, printing, and production coordination services, working with authors, publishers, libraries, and other organizations. The Press publishes its own letterpress editions and designs and produces letterpress and offset works for many of the nation’s preeminent private libraries.
The exhibition will run from May 28 through August.
Karolyne Garner will speak at the April meeting of the Baxter Society. This will be held on Zoom on Wednesday, April 9, at 6:00 ET.
Karolyne Hu Cheng Garner is General Counsel for LawProse Inc. She specializes in intellectual property, patents, and litigation. She and her husband Bryan, both members of the Grolier Club, share a library of some 38,000 volumes at their home in Dallas.
Karolyne collects books of etiquette. She describes the beginnings of her collecting like this:
A book here and a book there. Isn’t that how most collections begin? Mine began with Jane Austen and evolved into books on etiquette, something thickly woven into Austen’s stories. My first book was a journal where I pasted in columns from Dear Abby and Miss Manners. Now, with guidance and help from my book-collecting husband, Bryan, my collection extends beyond what people traditionally consider etiquette—beyond the stuffy Victorian-era or good-manners tomes devoted to weddings and fine engagements.
Etiquette is about empathy and sympathy for others. That’s why Austen’s works are intriguing—etiquette ranges from societal measuring sticks to barbs spread by gossips. While the current arbiter elegantiarum, Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin), gently shows us how to be better versions of ourselves, many continually misunderstand the genre.
