Date / Time
- October 24, 2019
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
The young widow who kept her husband’s heart in her desk, the author of the first post-apocalyptic novel and the immortal Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was so much more than a goth pin-up!
Upcoming Events
Hands-on Tour: Shakespeare In Love
Date / Time
- October 11, 2019
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Lovers abound in the works of Shakespeare. His characters struggle and play and persist, and sometimes die, in pursuit of love. In this brand new Hands-On Tour, we’ll explore his myriad visions of love in early editions of his poems and plays from our collection. Come love with Will.
Hands-on Tour: Villa Diodati, the Summer of Monsters
Date / Time
- October 4, 2019
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
In June of 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont joined Lord Byron and his doctor John Polidori at a rented villa on Lake Geneva. Eighteen-year-old Mary had eloped with the already married poet Percy the year before, and Byron had fled England in disgrace. Cold, stormy weather kept the young people cloistered for long nights of ghost stories and scientific speculation. From this alembic of romance, scandal, science, and horror, Mary dreamed up Frankenstein and Polidori began the first vampire story in English fiction. Explore the creation of these immortal monsters with first editions and manuscripts born by the shores of Lake Geneva at the Rosenbach’s Villa Diodati Hands-on Tour.
Hands-on Tour: Charles Dickens, The Inimitable Boz
Date / Time
- September 24, 2019
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Beginning with his early works published under pseudonym “Boz” (he later impishly signed his letters “The Inimitable Boz”), Charles Dickens was a literary phenomenon in the 19th century, and his ubiquity continues with legions of readers all over the world.
Hands-on Tour: Banned Books
Event Phone: (215) 732-1600
Date / Time
- September 22, 2019
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
From the Canterbury Tales to Ulysses, the Rosenbach’s collection is full of books that have been banned, challenged, or censored. During Banned Books Week (Sept 24-30) take your rights and the books back into your own hands, discuss the controversies surrounding them, and celebrate your freedom to read.
Hands-on Tour: 19th Century Gay Lives, or, Love Revealed
Date / Time
- September 20, 2019
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Bold, cautious, resolved, ambivalent, and sometimes all of the above, gay men of the 19th century strove for authentic identities in art, literature, and love. In this Hands-on Tour, we’ll look at the rise and fall of Oscar Wilde, follow John Addington Symonds path from self-acceptance to advocacy, fraternize with Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, and see the first use of the word homosexual in an English publication.
Hands-on Tour: Lewis Carroll
Event Phone: (215) 732-1600
Date / Time
- September 19, 2019
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Mathematician and cleric Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published children’s books under the pen name Lewis Carroll. This tour will explore both the man and the author, drawing on letters from Dodgson to his publishers, original drawings by John Tenniel (the illustrator of the Alice books) photographs of children taken by Carroll, and, of course, copies of his books.
Hands-on Tour: Love Letters
Date / Time
- September 15, 2019
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Join us for this rare peek into some of the most personal and emotional writing in our collections. From the aching yearnings of poet John Keats to the dying wishes of a Civil War solider, the Rosenbach is home to a variety of love letters. Spend an hour getting up-close and personal with a variety of treasures, including correspondence from Marlene Dietrich to Mercedes De Acosta and handwritten pages from James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Hands-on Tour: James Joyce & Irish Authors
Event Phone: (215) 732-1600
Date / Time
- September 8, 2019
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Along with James Joyce’s handwritten manuscript of his modernist masterpiece Ulysses, we’ll also read and handle works by Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and more! These Irish authors have connections and influences extending from Thomas Jefferson and Moby-Dick to the present day.
Bibliococktails | Barrett and Browning in Love
Date / Time
- January 10, 2020
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
The Bibliococktails series celebrates great literature and great libations.