ThoughtGallery.org > Anthony Grafton: “How a Colonial Family Read: The Winthrops and Their Books”

Anthony Grafton: “How a Colonial Family Read: The Winthrops and Their Books”

When John Winthrop and his family left England for Massachusetts, they brought along more than their notions about beginning a New World life. They brought books, in quantity, and they went on buying more. And they used them actively, for everything from searching their own souls and disciplining less obedient ones to practicing alchemy and hunting witches. In this lecture, acclaimed historian and author Anthony Grafton will use evidence in the Winthrops’ copies of their books to show how four generations of male and female Winthrops read, and track the story of an early American family over time.

This lecture in the history of the book is part of NYC Bibliography week.

About the Speaker

Anthony Grafton teaches European history at Princeton University. His books include Defenders of the Text (Harvard, 1991); The Footnote: A Curious History (Harvard, 1997); (with Joanna Weinberg) “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and A Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Harvard, 2011); and The Culture of Correction in Renaissance Europe (British Library). His articles and reviews have appeared in the TLS, the London Review of Books, the Nation, the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He is the curator of “Treasures of the New York Public Library,” which will open in summer 2017.











When: Sat., Jan. 28, 2017 at 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Where: The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Ave.
212-822-7200
Price: Free
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When John Winthrop and his family left England for Massachusetts, they brought along more than their notions about beginning a New World life. They brought books, in quantity, and they went on buying more. And they used them actively, for everything from searching their own souls and disciplining less obedient ones to practicing alchemy and hunting witches. In this lecture, acclaimed historian and author Anthony Grafton will use evidence in the Winthrops’ copies of their books to show how four generations of male and female Winthrops read, and track the story of an early American family over time.

This lecture in the history of the book is part of NYC Bibliography week.

About the Speaker

Anthony Grafton teaches European history at Princeton University. His books include Defenders of the Text (Harvard, 1991); The Footnote: A Curious History (Harvard, 1997); (with Joanna Weinberg) “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and A Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Harvard, 2011); and The Culture of Correction in Renaissance Europe (British Library). His articles and reviews have appeared in the TLS, the London Review of Books, the Nation, the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He is the curator of “Treasures of the New York Public Library,” which will open in summer 2017.

Buy tickets/get more info now