Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies
Upcoming Events
Horszowski Trio, Chamber Music at the Clark
Sun 10/11 • 2PM - 4PM PDT
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The program includes compositions by Johannes Brahms, Arnold Schoenberg, and Franz Schubert. Please visit the event website for full details and ticket information.
Quatuor Danel, Chamber Music at the Clark
Sun 10/25 • 2PM - 4PM PDT
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The program includes compositions by Sergei Prokofiev, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Please visit the event website for full details and ticket information.
Through the Magic Door: Stories from the Private Library of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Mon 11/2 • 4PM - 5:30PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Nearly a decade ago the descendants of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) transferred a substantial part of the author’s private library to Blackie House Library and Museum in Edinburgh, the city of his birth. Each of the 400 volumes tells a unique story of the writer who not only created the globally admired character Sherlock Holmes but was author of dozens upon dozens of works in fictional and non-fictional genres. In this talk, Dr. William Zachs, the Director of the Blackie House Library and Museum, tells tales teased out from the pages of the collection that reveal the close connections between the books Conan Doyle owned and read and those he wrote and revised. Using his own critical powers of observation and deduction, Zachs uncovers significant biographical revelations that bring us closer to the author and his times.
Odious! In Wollen! Blank Precedents and the London Stationers, 1690-1830
Thu 11/5 • 4PM - 5:30PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The 21st Kenneth Karmiole Lecture on the History of the Book Trade, given by Dennis Duncan, Associate Professor, University College London. This talk begins with a collection of four dozen Burying in Woollen affidavits from the village of Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, dating from the first decade of the eighteenth century to the last. Each affidavit testifies to a burial in the village, and an oath taken by a relative of the deceased that the body was wrapped in nothing other than wool. These are roughly-printed, single-sheet forms, illustrated with crude woodcuts of skulls and cadavers. They were printed seventy miles away in London. What can the stationery of a country rector tell us about the practices of the London printers, how they advertised, and how the blank precedent?what we might today call a form?offered rich, ever-changing opportunities to supplement their book work?
Trio Con Brio Copenhagen, Chamber Music at the Clark
Sun 11/8 • 2PM - 4PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The program includes compositions by Lili Boulanger, Maurice Ravel, and Felix Mendelssohn. Please visit the event website for full details and ticket information.
William Andrews Clark Jr, California Fine Press, and Literary Activity in Los Angeles
Fri 11/13 • 9AM - 5PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The conference "William Andrews Clark Jr., California Fine Press, Independent Publishing, and Literary Activity in Los Angeles," organized by Johanna Drucker, Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor Emerita, Department of Information Studies (UCLA), explores the connection between William Andrews Clark Jr. and the fine press community that emerged in Southern California in the 1930s, which is evident in the extensive collections assembled in his lifetime and after. This conference reflects on the role of Clark and his Library in the broader range of literary and publishing activity in the decades after its founding. For additional details, please visit the event website.
Hogarth's Lost Annotations
Mon 11/16 • 4PM - 5:30PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Hogarth' "Lost" Annotations, presented by Dr. Zirwat Chowdhury, Assistant Professor of 18th- and 19th-Century European Art, Department of Art History (UCLA), focuses on an annotated copy of The Investigator No. CCCXXII, one of a series of essays published by the 18th-century Scottish painter, Allan Ramsay. The annotations are those of Ramsay’s contemporary, the English painter and printmaker, William Hogarth. A prized document for its contribution to the artists’ important debates on art theory and aesthetic philosophy, the annotated volume has been understood by Hogarth scholars to have been long lost, even though it has been part of the Clark collections since it was acquired by William Andrews Clark Jr. in 1929. This talk will discuss how the annotated volume might expand our understanding of Hogarth’s theory of art, foundational to the history of 18th-century British art and controversially espoused by the artist in 1753 in his treatise on art and aesthetics, The Analysis of Beauty.
Human/Being, 1400-1800, Conference 1: Human/Plant
Fri 12/4 • 9AM - 5PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
This conference is part of the 2026-27 Core Program, a year-long series of three conferences – Human/Plant, Human/Animal, and Human/Machine – that invite participants from across the humanistic disciplines (including history, art history, history of science, literature, philosophy, religious history, and ecocriticism) to explore how early moderns (1400-1800) sought to define and understand themselves through their relationships with non-human life forms, entities and systems. The first conference, Human/Plant, considers the human relationship to the vegetal world.
Manhattan Chamber Players, Chamber Music at the Clark
Sun 1/10 • 2PM - 4PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The program includes compositions by Johannes Brahms, Arnold Schoenberg, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Please visit the event website for full details and ticket information.
21st Century Book Collecting
Thu 2/25 • 4PM - 6PM PST
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
More than a quarter of the way into the century, traditional models of developing collections, both privately and institutionally, are no longer common practice. While book fairs have been held for centuries, they are now only one of many options for acquiring materials. The implications of these structural changes for emerging collectors, seasoned professionals, and those in the process of estate planning are important. Join Collections Advisor, Spencer W Stuart, as he outlines these transformations and how to navigate them as a collector. Using collector case studies from his professional practice, Spencer will demonstrate generational changes in the outlook and intent around building collections of rare books and ephemera brought on by technological and economic changes to the trade and auction arena.