Culture Club: The Curious History of the Boston Anthenaeum (review)

Despite its playful subtitle, this is a solid piece of historical scholarship by independent scholar Katherine Wolff. She serves up a not-quite-chronological history of the Boston Athenaeum, one of the few surviving subscription libraries in the United States, from its founding in 1807 through the mid-nineteenth century. Her approach is to profile individual men and women whose lives were affected by their connections to the Athenaeum and who, in turn, left their mark on the institution. Her book complements two other publications precipitated by the Atheneum's bicenten-nial: The Boston Athenaeum: Bicentennial Essays, edited by Richard Wendorf (Boston: Boston Athenaeum; distributed by University Press of New England, 2009) and the sumptuously illustrated exhibit catalog, Acquired Taste: 200 Years of Collecting for the Boston Athenaeum (Boston: Boston Athenaeum; distributed by University Press of New England, 2006).

Wolff begins with a brief introduction delineating the distinctive character types among the gentlemen who founded the Athenaeum—the administrator, the intellectual, the businessman, and the amateur. Making it clear at the outset that the Athenaeum cannot be understood as a monolithic entity, she consistently draws the reader's attention to instances of anxiety and conflict. Her varied sources include the Athenaeum's official records, its founders' correspondence, contemporary pamphlets and newspapers, painted portraits, and architectural drawings.

The first part, Enterprise, opens with a chapter about William Smith Shaw, a rabid book collector who became the Athenaeum's first librarian. Wolff dwells on Shaw's relationship with fellow Harvard student Arthur Maynard Walter, quoting extensively from their correspondence to convey the intensity of upper-class male friendships in the early years of the nineteenth century. Another chapter traces the connections between the Athenaeum and British cultural models. Businessman and philanthropist William Roscoe, instrumental in the founding of the Liverpool Athenaeum in 1798, was an inspiration to the Bostonian gentlemen who financed their city's new cultural center. Drawing on both literary and pictorial sources, Wolff explains how the "cult of Roscoe" shaped the emerging American ideal of a morally upright and civic-minded merchant class, fueled Shaw's ravenous acquisition of British books, and influenced spatial design of the Athenaeum as an exclusive refuge for its proprietors. The institution's seal, which depicts cherubs gathering apples, symbolizes the founders' desire to create a paradisiacal space for the pleasures of reading and learning.

The second part, Identity, reveals a more complicated relationship between the Athenaeum and the community as time went on. Hannah Adams, a self-educated historical writer, was the first woman to be granted formal access to the Athenaeum's reading room (in 1829) and "the earliest direct beneficiary of Athenaeum patronage." (p. 80) Wolff uncovers the complex motivations behind the author-patron relationship and the ways in which Adams' atypical role as a scholar simultaneously challenged and reinforced contemporary notions of femininity. The following chapter traces the Athenaeum's growing importance as a museum of painting and sculpture and a site for public exhibits. For 50 years it was Boston's only art gallery and a respectable place for the city's elite to mingle. The Athenaeum's enhanced role in Boston's social and cultural life influenced the architecture of its Beacon Street building, which opened in 1850 and is still in use.

In the final section, Conscience, Wolff explores moral issues that might have undone the Athenaeum. The first was the anti-slavery movement. The institution took no official stand on abolition, yet Wolff contends that its passive role "subtly contributed to the delay of emancipation." (p.113) She recounts the cooling of relationships between the Athenaeum's officers and two leading figures—Senator Charles Sumner and author Lydia Maria Child—as a result of their public anti-slavery views. The interworkings of Bostonian politics, economics, and culture were never simple, however. The wives of Athenaeum members were often deeply involved in abolitionist activities...