by Stephanie on Collective Witness, the library that lent books to Washington, a Johnson talk, a Common Sense conservation display and the pleasures of a very old shelf
Saturday 10 October, 3.00pm, a bench in Central Park, a paper bag containing a sandwich and a tote bag containing a book I am pretending to read while I wait for a friend to arrive on a train.
Dear Diary. I have a weakness for the eighteenth century, which I will excuse by saying that it is the century in which the English language discovered it could be funny on purpose. Swift published A Modest Proposal in 1729. Johnson finished his Dictionary in 1755. Franklin sold almanacs by the thousand. In my reading life, they are the ancestors. So when I discovered that a library on the Upper East Side has put its 18th-century collections on public display, I wrote the address on my hand.
The Exhibition
The New York Society Library’s page describes Collective Witness: A Library for a Young Country as free and open to the public in the Peluso Family Exhibition Gallery through 31 December 2026. The address is 53 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075. Visitors can drop in any time the Library is open: Monday to Thursday 9am to 8pm, Friday 9am to 5pm, and Saturday and Sunday 11am to 5pm. The page notes the Library is closed on Monday 12 October.
The exhibition covers the Library’s role in the early U.S. government. The page says it lent books to President Washington and his Cabinet, and that it served as the first Library of Congress. Its 18th-century collections reflect Enlightenment ideas and the written word that inspired the Revolution. The opening-reception page adds that the exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, opened to the public on 18 June, and that the Library was founded 22 years before the Declaration was signed, which works out to about 1754. I note that the page does not list specific objects on display, and I will not guess at them.
The Talks
The programme, as listed, included a talk on 5 October by Celine Luppo McDaid on Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary and 18th-century literary life, which has already happened. Still to come are a talk on 21 October by Sara Cedar Miller on British and American Revolutionary cartoons and Central Park landscapes, and a Democracy Writes! writing workshop and open mic on 24 October, led by Rhonda Zangwill, for high school and up. The page also describes a digital time capsule that invites readers to submit cultural items representing this moment, to be opened on a future U.S. national anniversary, and a Conservation Studio feature on the treatment of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.
I read that last item three times. A conservation studio, treating a copy of Common Sense. Somewhere in a quiet room, a person with a very small brush is removing a century and a half of grime from a pamphlet that helped start a country. I find it unbearably moving, and I also find it funny, because the pamphlet was written in ordinary words and the conservator’s job is to make sure nobody ever reads it with a coffee.
The Eighteenth Century, From Both Sides
I come at the period from the side of British and colonial literature, and a library like this one is a reminder that the two literatures were once the same. The colonial reader subscribed to English periodicals and quoted English poets and argued, passionately, in English prose. The Revolution did not abolish the reading list. It simply added new names to the bottom of it.
For a taste of the London that the colonists were reading about, I recommend my own piece on London in the 1700s, which perfected smoke, class anxiety and wig-based authority. It is meant as a joke, and it is also a decent summary. The wigs were real. The smoke was real. The anxiety was the most real of all.
The Library As An Institution
There is a quiet pleasure in the existence of a membership library. It is a place that says reading is worth a subscription. I wrote about the British version in a post on the London library as quiet defiance in public buildings, and I would say the American version has the same stubborn dignity. A library is a building where the rule is to be quiet, and the rule is respected, and everyone involved feels slightly proud.
The other joy of a library is the way it waits. History does not hurry. It sits on a shelf and keeps its place, and I have a short, affectionate note on this called the library visit, when British history waits patiently on the shelf. If you have never gone into a library with no purpose except to see what is there, I urge you to try it. You may leave with a card and a changed mind.
A Few Cautions
Everything above comes from the library’s own pages. I have not visited, and I do not know what the gallery looks like, how crowded it is or whether the sandwich policy is strict. Please check the Library’s current hours before you travel, because they can change, and a closed door is a poor reward for a journey.
Closing Entry
I file for Bohiney Magazine, and my British colleagues at prat.UK are fond of asking whether American history is any good. I tell them it is excellent, and that it has the advantage of being recent enough to be checked. For the long view on how humour has crossed the Atlantic, my page on the history of British satire, from Swift to social media is where I start, and for a final laugh, Newsthump is a good companion. The bench is damp and my friend’s train is late. Goodnight, Diary. Open the book.
SOURCE: bohiney.com
