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Workshop | Calligraphy: The Art of the Hebrew Letter | In-Person
September 22, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
November 3, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 23, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 18, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
In this four-part workshop series, explore the creativity and connection that live within the art of Hebrew lettering.
![[SOLD OUT] Behind the Bookcase Tour | The Duties of the Tea-Table: Exploring the History and Culture of Tea | In-Person](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739667007848-MCLFN0L33ML12PPQGL4R/Duties-of-the-Tea-Table-graphic.jpg)
[SOLD OUT] Behind the Bookcase Tour | The Duties of the Tea-Table: Exploring the History and Culture of Tea | In-Person
This tour will explore the global, cross-cultural connections forged via the thriving tea market in Europe in the 1600s and 1700s, as well as the role tea drinking played in the cultural history of the British Empire.
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Book Club | The Power of Bridging by john a. powell – A People’s Friend Program | In-Person
Esteemed civil rights scholar john a. powell offers a framework for building connection across differences through the practice of bridging.
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Workshop | Authentic Heart: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Work and Life of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person
This two-hour workshop, co-led by yogi Liza Seltzer and Rosenbach John C. Haas Director Kelsey Scouten Bates, will introduce you to de Acosta’s work and legacy and invite you to take a deep dive into what it means to be truly authentic.
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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Book Arts: The World Between the Covers | In-Person
In this tour, we’ll connect historical treasures of the Rosenbach collections to the contemporary creative field of Book Arts.
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Workshop | Book Arts: Printing America’s Founding Documents – A People’s Friend Program | In-Person
In this hands-on printing workshop, you will use a tabletop press to create your own, personal copies of U.S. founding documents–such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—complemented by a selection of important engravings from the Rosenbach’s holdings.
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Book Club | The Body in the Library Book Club: Nekesa Afia, Dead Dead Girls | In-Person
This is the third and final session of this series of The Body in the Library Book Club. In this series we celebrate the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance by rediscovering talented mystery writers from the era, and then engage with recent mystery novels set in early 20th-century Harlem. During this session we will be focusing on Nekesa Afia’s, Dead Dead Girls (2021)
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Member Event | Uncle Umberto’s Orchard with Frederic Tuten and Mark Fischer | In-Person
Join us and Plain Wrapper Press Redux publisher, Mark Fischer, at a Members Event centered on Uncle Umberto’s Orchard by Frederic Tuten.
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Workshop | Book Arts: Book Structures in Early America | In-Person
Experience the thrill of historical bookbinding at this workshop, where you will make your own unique journal with the guidance of Ramon Townsend, a local master bookbinder.
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Excursion | An Afternoon in Enlightenment Paris | In-Person
Join Andalusia, the Rosenbach, and the Alliance Française de Philadelphie for a special opportunity to spend an afternoon in the library of one of early America’s most important intellects, engaging with his collection of 18th-century books.
![Behind the Bookcase Tour | [SOLD OUT] Mary Shelley: The Godmother of Goth | In-Person](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739901818040-VZRMPCEX1KFSJBPZXZMC/Mary-Shelley-Tour-graphic.jpg)
Behind the Bookcase Tour | [SOLD OUT] Mary Shelley: The Godmother of Goth | In-Person
In this tour we will explore the life and works of this radical, proto-feminist, and quintessential Romantic as we sift through early editions of her works, along with manuscripts and letters of her husband, poet Percy Shelley, and the couple’s questionable company.
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Workshop | Moods: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Poems of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person
Join yogi Liza Seltzer and Rosenbach John C. Haas Director Kelsey Scouten Bates for this poetry-inspired yin yoga practice. You’ll be guided into passive, longer-held poses that invoke both stillness and openness in body and mind; you’ll listen from this place of openness to the writing poet Charles Hanson Towne describes in his introduction to Moods as having “a haunting quality, a breath of mystery, as though a ghost walked into a garden.”
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Course | The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai with Melissa R. Klapper | In-Person
Join the Rosenbach for a special seminar on Jewish women’s history in the beautiful parlor of the Rosenbach brothers’ home on Delancey Place. Led by gifted teacher and scholar Melissa Klapper, the course explores the new book The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai.
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Excursion | New York International Antiquarian Book Fair 2025 | In-Person
April 4, 2025
April 5, 2025
Every year, Rosenbach staff and our Delancey Society journey north to New York, to experience the antiquarian book fair, visit the city’s cultural institutions, and get up close and personal with the Rosenbach’s collection development strategy. This year, the Delancey Society will kick off the weekend on Friday, April 4 with an exclusive visit to the private collection of Susan Jaffe Tane, followed by a cocktail reception at Freeman’s|Hindman auction house. On Saturday, April 5, we will enjoy a group brunch at The East Pole followed by a curated tour of the Fair with members of the Rosenbach’s Department of Outreach & Engagement, stopping at the booths of leading booksellers for insights into the book trade—past, present, and future.
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Rosenbacchanal 2025
Rosenbacchanal 2025: The Power of the Book will feature a conversation between writer and essayist Adam Gopnik, best known as a staff writer at The New Yorker for the past forty years, and Honoree Arthur Spector, the Rosenbach’s Chair Emeritus. Their discussion will explore the allure, the potency, and the omnipresence of one the most powerful objects the world has ever known: the book.
![[ONE SEAT LEFT] The Republic of Letters: The Rosenbach’s American History Book Club, in Partnership with Carpenters’ Hall](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739813524817-0F4LWU0G67ZCAU0DHBQI/Republic-of-Letters-graphic.jpg)
[ONE SEAT LEFT] The Republic of Letters: The Rosenbach’s American History Book Club, in Partnership with Carpenters’ Hall
The book club’s first season is titled “The Founders, Revisited.” Inspired by rare books and manuscripts in the Rosenbach and Carpenters’ Hall collections, this season’s book club meetings will critically examine the contributions and complicated legacies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Benjamin Rush.
![[SOLD OUT] Book-Club | The Ladies of the House of Love: “Horrid Novels”: Gothic Inspirations for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey | In-Person](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/66fb68a83ed38c0c99c762f9/1739909001171-JU5KCTYLTS7TVHWX5MQ5/Northanger-course-graphic.jpg)
[SOLD OUT] Book-Club | The Ladies of the House of Love: “Horrid Novels”: Gothic Inspirations for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey | In-Person
May 13, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
June 3, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
July 8, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
September 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
October 14, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
November 11, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
December 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
This special book club season of The Ladies of the House of Love will begin with three iconic Gothic works, including one, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), that Austen heavily satirizes in Northanger Abbey. Then, the club will explore lesser-known books that Austen references as “horrid novels” in Northanger. Finally, on December 9, 2025, just one week before Austen’s 250th birthday, the club will read Northanger Abbey and hold a birthday party for the Authoress. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of the Gothic as part of a community of fellow book lovers and Janeites!
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The 2025 Bloomsday Festival
Every June 16, we gather together to read from Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s a beloved and foundational event for this institution, the home of Joyce’s manuscript of a novel that continues to inspire, scandalize, and thrill.
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Book Arts Workshop: Locked Love Letters
Send a secret love note in this hands-on workshop exploring the custom of manipulating a letter so it forms its own elaborate sealed envelope–to be opened only by its intended recipient!
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Workshop | Bookmaking and Book Arts with Bryn Michelson-Ziegler | In-Person
Join Rosenbach Assistant Curator Bryn Michelson-Ziegler and the Young Friends of the Rosenbach to learn how to make your own buttonhole stitch book.
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Delancey Society Excursion: A Bibliophile’s Guide to Charlottesville
As the Rosenbach and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation prepare to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, we are pleased to offer a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse into the complex history of Jefferson’s famed plantation estate and the libraries he built and enjoyed there.