BOOK CLUB. A convenient title for private associations which print books for distribution among a limited circle of subscribers. Such clubs, being usually composed of scholarly men, and endowed with sufficient means, have rendered no slight tkerviees to literature and learning by rendering accessible a number of valuable works which had existed only in manuscript or in very rare printed copies. While associations like the Dilettante Society (q.v.) accomplished some work in publishing, yet books as such were not their primary care. The Roxburghe Club (q.v.), founded in 1812, was the earliest English book club, properly so called; its system imposed on each member the reprinting of one book, and its work was not specially important. The Banna tyne Club, originated by Scott in 1823, was more practical. The Camden Society (1S38) began the modern method of publishing by the society instead of leaving it to individual members; it has produced a long series of most useful his torical publications. Among many English so cieties of the kind, the following are specially worthy of note: The Parker Society (1840-55), the Percy Society (1840-52). the Hakluyt So ciety (1846—), and the Early English Text Society ( 1864—) .
During the Colonial Period in America. and that which immediately followed the Revolution, there were a number of literary associations whose members jointly published their writings, after the fashion of the time, in periodical form. The earliest and most famous of these was the Junto, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 17.26. To its efforts the Philadelphia Library (1731), the University of Pennsylvania (1740), and the American Philosophical Society f 1768) owe their small beginnings; and it published at different times ten periodicals of a literary and historical nature, most of which lasted for only a few num bers. The Drone Club, founded in 1792 by Charles Broekdcn Brown and others, and the Literary Confederacy. formed in 1817 by William Cullen Bryant, Robert C. Sands, Jitines 31. East
burn, andlian C. Verplanek, were of the same nature. The first book club in the full sense. however. was the Seventy-six Society, originated in Philadelphia in 1854 by Edward D. Ingraham, stating its object as "the publication and republication of hooks and papers relating to the American Revolution." It lasted only three years. and was immediately succeeded in New York by 'The Club,' as it was ealled—it never received any specific name—and two years later by the Bradford Club, an offshoot from the former. In 1858 began the longer career of the Prince Society in Boston, which is still in exist ence, and has a list of twenty-six publications, made or in preparation. In the sixties there was a veritable mania for club publication, and ab surd ventures were numerous, charging extrava gant prices for their subscription books. The revival of club publication dates from about 1876. since when it has been carried forward in a dignified and rational manner. The Historical Printing Club of Brooklyn deserves a foremost place in this period. Founded in 1876, it has published, chiefly under the editorship of Paul Leicester Ford. over seventy valuable historical documents. But the best-known and most impor tant of all is the Grolier Club, founded in New York in 1884 by a number of well-known makers and collectors of books. It has been very suc cessful, not only in its distinctive purpose. but also in drawing together men of scholarly culture in the delightful home which it built for itself in 1889. Its membership was originally limited to fifty. but has now been extended to nearly four hundred. It has published in elaborate and beautiful form thirty important literary and bib liographical works, besides catalogues of the valuable exhibitions given by it at frequent inter vals. Consult: Hume and Evans. Learned So cieties and Printing Clubs of the United King dom (London, 1853) Growoll, American Book Clubs (New York, 1S97).