Reading Discussion Series: "Intellectual Seeds: The Bounty of William Sturgis, Past and Present"

Sign up for this winter's Reading and Discussion Series, "Intellectual Seeds: The Bounty of William Sturgis, Past and Present."  We've gone back into the Library’s past and selected four of the books that Sturgis’s first patrons checked out in 1867 – the Library’s inaugural year.  Four scholars will examine these books from both the contemporary context of post-Civil war Massachusetts and from that of today's readers.  What insights can you gain from the literary tastes of your village predecessors?  For the extra-curious, we'll provide a list of all the popular titles that the folks in Barnstable were reading, and we'll even order a few of the really obscure titles that were big hits in 1867.

24 January: "Silas Marner," by George Eliot, with Dr. Elaine Craghead

28 February: "Cape Cod," by Henry David Thoreau, with Anne Speyer

27 March: "The House of the Seven Gables"  **THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL 15 MAY**  See below.

24 April: "Richard II," by William Shakespeare, with Dr. James Crowley

15 May: "The House of the Seven Gables," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with Dr. Sam Coale (who's just published a book on Hawthorne and is working on another!)

To register, call 508-362-6636, email Antonia at sturgisreference@comcast.net, or drop by the circ desk.  Sponsored in part by a grant from Mass Humanities (http://www.masshumanities.org.)