Members, plus one guest, have the opportunity to attend this preview book sale on Friday night before the annual book sale opens to the public on Saturday morning.

Proceeds benefit the Salem Athenæum collections and educational programs.

On Columbus Day we will present a program for all ages exploring the traditions of elections in America from the Election Day sermons of the Colonial Era recreated with marionettes to the post-vote celebration with cake made from an authentic recipe.

Author Hale Bradt, chronicles the story of his parents—two ordinary Americans, Wilber and Norma Bradt—during an extraordinary time, World War II. He offers fresh insight—on a deeply personal level—into the historic conflict as it was fought by the U.S. Army in the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and The Philippines and by a family on the home front. It is an epic tale of duty, heroism, love, and human frailty. He adds another uniquely American voice to this rich story: a son seeking to unravel the tangled threads of his family’s legacy. The abridged edition of this story releases today—Pearl Harbor Day.

It’s that time of year again — time for our beloved Annual Garden Party! Enjoy reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances and making new at this yearly event.

Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Pulitzer-winning historian Gordon S. Wood discusses his new book, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy’s champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England’s rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government. Their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. But late in life, something remarkable happened: these two men were nudged into reconciliation. What started as a grudging trickle of correspondence became a great flood, and a friendship was rekindled, over the course of hundreds of letters.

Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history at Brown University. His books have received the Pulitzer, Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes, as well as a National Book Award nomination and the New York Historical Society Prize in American History. They include Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, Revolutionary Characters, The Purpose of the Past, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Idea of America.

GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1909)

Grumble or chuckle at his literary creations, George Meredith stands as an author Athenaeum members read, and an author who has earned his place in literary history.  Poet, novelist, and lecturer, Meredith has been lauded for his philosophy, imagination and spirit.  Tennyson, George Eliot, Rossetti and Swinburne all admired him. Prime Minister Asquith wanted him buried in Westminster Abbey. Nevertheless, Meredith did not become famous until his later years. His style was always difficult, no matter how rich in characterization and magic his writing might be. Of The Egoist, 1879, the Encyclopedia Britannica states that the novel  “shows an increase in Meredith’s twistedness of literary style and is admittedly hard to read for those who merely want a story, but which for concentrated analysis and the real drama of the human spirit [it] is an astounding production.”

If you are game to “take the challenge” of Meredith’s aphorisms and convoluted sentences, or if you want to consign Meredith to the dust bin, either way you are invited to explore some of his writings with the Reappraisal Reading Circle on Monday, November 13 at 7PM.

Fall 2017-Winter 2018
Quinton Oliver Jones (1903-1999)

Quinton Oliver Jones and his two siblings grew up in their family’s ancestral home in Salem, MA. He was great-grandson of a sea captain who sailed during Salem’s golden age of navigation. A close-knit family, the Joneses were nurturing, church-attending, and somewhat protective. However modest their circumstances, education was the greatest valued priority and all the children graduated from college. Quinton attended Salem public schools and entered Harvard in the class of 1926. Initially declaring English as his major, he was quickly drawn into the art department from which he graduated cum laude.
The year 1926 was pivotal in his life—his father died two months before his graduation, and his uncle died several months after. With siblings now pursuing their academic careers away from Salem, he was left to take care of his ailing mother and the family home. Quinton chose to make the most of his proximity to Boston and augmented his art studies over the next three years by enrolling in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he studied sculpture and he learned the techniques of stone carving and modeling in clay.
His family home shaped many of his interests and art work—the house was full of books, magazines, and newspapers that had been saved from previous generations. He read voraciously, and took many themes from this source material, as well as current events. Quinton led a quiet, dedicated, frugal and independent life, focused on his art—his creativity sustained him.