In honor of the bicentennial of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), the Grolier Club of New York is hosting a public exhibition entitled In Pursuit of a Vision: Two Centuries of Collecting at the American Antiquarian Society, on view through November 17, 2012. 
   
    The American Antiquarian Society is a renowned research library of American history and culture through 1876.  It has been described by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood as “the greatest collection of early Americana in the world.”  Begun in 1812 with a founding gift of 8,000 volumes, it now comprises over four million items including books, pamphlets, newspapers, broadsides, graphic arts materials, ephemera and manuscripts created throughout the United States, the West Indies and a good portion of Canada before 1900.  The Society possesses seventy percent of all American imprints produced through 1820 – the largest such collection in the world.
     
    The exhibition and accompanying catalog focus on seminal examples from AAS collections, and the donors, members and staff who brought these items to the Society. The Society’s history begins with its founder Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War printer, and later the foremost publisher of the early Republic.  His initial donation included many of his own imprints, such as an early broadside containing a poem by America’s first significant black poet, Phillis Wheatley.  The exhibition also contains a pamphlet Thomas created in 1775 composed of eye-witness depositions describing the battles of Lexington and Concord entitled
"A Narrative, of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s Troops Under the Command of General Gage, on the Nineteenth of April, 1775."
   
    Many of the items on display document pivotal moments in American history, including the first Confederate imprint, a hastily-created extra sheet from the Charleston Mercury proclaiming “The Union is Dissolved,” dated December 20, 1860.  The settlement of the West is depicted in another 1866 broadside promoting a history of the vigilantes of Montana Territory, using thirteen wooden and metal type faces in vivid red and blue ink.

    The development of American culture is represented by items such as the first modern novel published in America, a unique surviving copy of Samuel Richardson’s "Pamela" printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1742.  Other works on view include a first edition of John Greenleaf Whittier’s "Poems Written During the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, Between the Years 1830 and 1838;" Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "Fanshawe, a Tale," published in 1828; and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s "Letter from the Rev. R.W. Emerson, to the Second Church and Society" published in 1832.
   
    Highlights from the Society’s extensive collection of graphic materials include a chromolithograph entitled “Cloisonné Vase,” published by the Boston firm of Louis Prang & Company in 1896, and “Taproom,” an 1858 watercolor by David Claypoole Johnston, both from the collection of Charles Henry Taylor, a member of the family who founded the Boston Globe newspaper.
   
    In Pursuit of a Vision also examines the impact on the Society of collectors in specialized fields, represented in examples of children’s literature, almanacs, hymnals, Louisiana imprints, racy newspapers, Caribbean newspapers and cookbooks, annotated auction catalogs, and book bindings.  Additionally, the exhibition details the Society’s role in the development of American bibliography.

    A number of public gallery tours will be held, led by curators from the American Antiquarian Society; for a schedule and more information, visit the Grolier website: www.grolierclub.org.