Hroswitha Club

The Hroswitha Club was founded in 1944 by a group of women bibliophiles: Sarah Gildersleeve Fife (who convened the group), Belle da Costa Greene, Anne Lyon Haight, Ruth S. Granniss, Eleanor Cross Marquand, Henrietta C. Bartlett and Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt.{{cite web |title=Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt |url=https://www.huntbotanical.org/about/?4 |website=Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation |publisher=Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation |accessdate=11 June 2020}} It was named in honor of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, a 10th-century German secular canoness, dramatist and poet.{{Cite web|url=https://www.grolierclub.org/default.aspx?p=v35ListDocument&ID=755370972&listid=11461&listitemid=122614&ssid=322536&dpageid=&listname=|title=Hroswitha Club: Records and Publications, 1944-1999|website=The Grolier Club. Finding Aids.|access-date=March 18, 2019}} At the time of the Club's founding, women bibliophiles were not allowed membership in many premier bibliographic societies such as the Grolier Club, the oldest existing bibliophilic club in North America, or the Caxton Club. (This policy remained in place at both the Grolier and Caxton Clubs until 1976.{{cite book |last1=Silverman |first1=Willa Z. |title=The New Bibliopolis: French Book Collectors and the Culture of Print, 1880-1914 |date=2008 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=9780802092113 |page=261}})

The first meeting of the Hroswitha Club was held on November 16, 1944, at the Cosmopolitan Club. It held regular meetings four to five times a year at multiple locations,{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29688731/what_is_so_rare/ |title=What is so Rare |first=George J. C. |last=Grasberger |work=The Philadelphia Inquirer |page=210 |date=May 8, 1949 |access-date=March 19, 2019 |via=newspapers.com}} and held its 200th meeting in 1994.

Members of the Hroswitha Club included authors, bibliographers, librarians, curators, and private collectors. Individual members had a wide range of collecting interests - they collected books not just about Hroswitha, but also boxing, "military costumes," and Walt Whitman; at least one member was a collector of incunabula. By the 1950s, membership had been reportedly capped at 40 members.{{cite journal |last1=Curtis |first1=S. |last2=Updike |first2=John |last3=Lemon |first3=Richard |title=Hroswithians |journal=New Yorker |date=August 10, 1957 |pages=18–19}} Some notable members were Sarah Gildersleeve Fife, Anne Lyon Haight,{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29688632/mrs_anne_haight_dies_was_author/ |title=Mrs. Anne Haight Dies; Was Author, Traveler |work=Hartford Courant |location=Litchfield, Connecticut |page=3 |date=August 10, 1977 |access-date=March 19, 2019 |via=newspapers.com}} Belle da Costa Greene, Frances Hooper, Ruth S. Granniss (librarian to the Grolier Club), Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt, Rosamond B. Loring, Eleanor Cross Marquand, and Shakespeare scholar Henrietta C. Bartlett.{{cite web |title=Guide to the Frances Hooper Papers 1928-1976 |url=https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.HOOPERF |publisher=University of Chicago Library |accessdate=19 March 2019}}

Members of the Hroswitha Club included authors, bibliographers, librarians, curators, and private collectors. They exchanged ideas, carried out research, and organized talks and visits to book collecting institutions both private and public. In 1948 Belle da Costa Greene, one of the few professional women then in the club, organized a visit to the Pierpont Morgan Library, giving group members access to the vault of rare materials.{{cite book |last1=Ardizzone |first1=Heidi |title=An Illuminated Life: Belle Da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege |date=2007 |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company |isbn=9780393051049}}

Additionally, the Club published several works throughout the 20th century, most notably a 1965 bibliography of Hroswitha almost a decade in the making; entitled Hroswitha of Gandersheim: Her Life, Times and Works, it was edited by Anne Lyon Haight with contributions from other Club members. Members carried out original research, establishing the dates that Hroswitha's dramas were performed.{{cite book|title=A Companion to Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (fl. 960): Contextual and Interpretive Approaches|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yScyAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA355|accessdate=19 March 2019|date=12 October 2012|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-23439-0|pages=355–}} The Club also commissioned a life of Hroswitha, by Robert Herndon Fife (1947).{{cite journal |last1=Bayerschmidt |first1=Carl |title=Review: Hroswitha of Gandersheim. Her Life, Times and Works, and a Comprehensive Bibliography. Edited by Anne Lyon Haight |journal=The Germanic Review |date=1966 |pages=302–303 |volume=41|doi=10.1080/19306962.1966.11754646 }}

The Club maintained its own private library, established in 1948 and later named the Sarah Gildersleeve Fife Memorial Library in honor of the club's founder; it specialized in books about Hroswitha, books published by members of the club, and other books of interest to collectors. The club's official bookplate was inspired by a copy of Albrecht Dürer's woodcut of Hroswitha that Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt acquired and donated to the club; she later had her friend Sarah B. Hill design the club's bookplate based on the woodcut.{{cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Mary Catherine |title=Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt as collector and patron of the arts |journal=Journal of William Morris Studies |date=Summer 2004 |pages=143–153 |url=http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/15.4Summer2004/15.4.Johnsen.pdf |accessdate=12 June 2020 |archive-date=12 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200612235048/http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/15.4Summer2004/15.4.Johnsen.pdf |url-status=dead }}

Records of the Club's correspondence and activities are found principally at the Grolier Club. Additionally, the Princeton University Library holds an address to the Club on the occasion of their visit by scholar and collector Miriam Y. Holden.{{Cite web|url=https://librarianofbabel.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/women-collectors-in-their-own-words/|title=Women Collectors in Their Own Words|last=Hastings|first=Emi|date=16 September 2014|website=Adventures in Book Collecting|access-date=18 March 2019}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/01/08/archives/miriam-y-holden-83-activist-and-collector.html|title=Miriam Y. Holden, 83, Activist and Collector|date=8 January 1977|work=The New York Times|access-date=March 18, 2019}}

• Barlow, Marjorie Dana. Notes on woman printers in Colonial America and the United States, 1639-1975. (New York: Hroswitha Club; Charlottesville, Va.: distributed by the University Press of Virginia, 1976)
• Haight, Anne Lyon. Hroswitha of Gandersheim: her life, times and works, and a comprehensive bibliography. (New York: Hroswitha Club, 1965)

• Finding aid for [https://www.grolierclub.org/default.aspx?p=v35ListDocument&ID=756000089&listid=11461&listitemid=138583&ssid=322536&dpageid=&listname= Deborah Evetts collection of material relating to Hroswitha Club, 1944- 1994], at the Grolier Club.
• Finding aid for the [https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/695?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=beinecke:bartlett&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes Henrietta C. Bartlett papers] at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (of particular interest is Series IV, documents related to the Hroswitha Club, 1940-1961)
• Miriam Y. Holden Collection [http://library.princeton.edu/collections/miriam-y-holden-collection main page] and [https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C0071 finding aid] at the Princeton University Library.
• [http://www.bookcollectinghistory.com/2011/11/trials-and-tribulations-of-woman-book.html "The Trials and Tribulations of a Woman Book Collector"], post at American Book Collecting (blog)
• [https://librarianofbabel.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/women-collectors-in-their-own-words/ "Women Collectors in Their Own Words"], post at Adventures in Book Collecting (blog)

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Category:Bibliophilia

Category:Book collecting

Category:Book clubs

Category:American book and manuscript collectors

Category:Women's clubs in the United States

Category:1944 establishments in New York City

Category:History of women in New York City