The Library Company of Philadelphia is making some exciting changes to better support researchers starting Monday, September 14, 2026.
For Scholars
Visit
Explore
Support
Upcoming Events
September
24sep5:30 pm8:00 pmHugh Hughes' Debts and the Stories we Tell About the American RevolutionFree
Event Details
Hugh Hughes’ Debts and the Stories We Tell
Event Details
Hugh Hughes’ Debts and the Stories We Tell About the American Revolution
with David Waldstreicher
Thursday, September 24th, 2026 | 5:30 pm | Free
In-Person | 1314 Locust St, Philadelphia, 19107
Please join us on the evening of September 24th for a lecture by author and professor David Waldstreiche
The relationship between private debts, political economy, and patriot politics has vexed historians for more than a century. Hugh Hughes, an artisan and schoolteacher and one of the first Sons of Liberty in New York, found that his avid participation in the long Revolutionary process and its settlement got him into and out of debt repeatedly. This talk will explore Hughes’ experience of debt in relation to his radical politics and will suggest that following both the money and the rhetoric yields insights into the relationship between injustice and politicization and may even put into dialogue interpretations of the Revolution that seem incompatible.
David Waldstreicher is Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His most recent book is The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys through Revolution and Independence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), which won the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians and the George Washington Book Prize. He is also the author of Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification; Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery and the American Revolution; and In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (1997) (Hill and Wang, 2009).
Time
September 24, 2026 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT-04:00)
29sep5:30 pm8:00 pmPhiladelphia Maps and Mapmakers with Christopher LaneFree
Event Details
Philadelphia Maps and Mapmakers with Christopher Lane
Event Details
Philadelphia Maps and Mapmakers with Christopher Lane
September 29th, 2026, at 5:30 PM | In-Person at the Library Company of Philadelphia
Join us on September 29th for a talk with Christopher Lane, co-author of Historic Maps of Philadelphia: A History of the City of Brotherly Love in Rare Maps (Reedy Press, 2026)
From its earliest days, Philadelphia was one of the leading American cities, growing from a small “green country towne” to one of the greatest urban centers in the world. It was also, from the late 18th century into the 20th century, a major center of American mapmaking. Not surprisingly, Philadelphia’s cartographers all made maps of their home base. The combination of a great city and important mapmakers produced a series of remarkable maps of Philadelphia. This lecture will examine how these cartographic images illustrate the history both of the city and of this important industry.
Christopher W. Lane has been in the print and map business for over four decades, as founder and co-owner of The Philadelphia Print Shop in Chestnut Hill and then The Philadelphia Print Shop West in Denver. He is now a private appraiser, consultant, author and lecturer. Chris has come to be recognized as one of the country’s experts in this field, as evidenced by his 22-year stint as print and map expert on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow. Chris has curated museum exhibitions and lectured around the country and overseas. He has written several books, including the Ewell Newman Award-winning Panorama of Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008). He has also written numerous articles in books and magazines, including “Philadelphia Mapmakers and the Beginnings of Commercial Mapmaking in America,” in Pennsylvania Legacies.
Copies of Chris’s book, Historic Maps of Philadelphia, will be available for purchase at this event
Click here purchase a copy of Historic Maps of Philadelphia from Reedy Press!
Time
September 29, 2026 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT-04:00)
October
02oct11:00 am12:00 pmLibrary Company History & Exhibitions TourTOUR
Event Details
Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour Friday, October 2nd at 11:00 AM In-Person Event Join us for a
Event Details
Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour
Friday, October 2nd at 11:00 AM
In-Person Event
Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.
Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays from May 1st through October 2nd, 2026.
Time
October 2, 2026 11:00 am - 12:00 pm(GMT-04:00)
15oct1:30 pm3:00 pmFireside Chat: Roundtable: Disability, Literature, Art, and Civil Rights
Event Details
Fireside Chat: Roundtable: Disability, Literature, Art, and Civil
Event Details
Fireside Chat: Roundtable: Disability, Literature, Art, and Civil Rights
with Sari Altschuler and Vanessa Warne
Thursday, October 15th, 2026 | 1:30 PM EST
Virtual Event | Free
Join us as we talk to Sari Altschuler, author of Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship, and Vanessa Warne, author of By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture, as they discuss their cultural histories addressing disability, literature, art, and civil rights.
Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026)
In the wake of the American Revolution, many of the differences we now call disabilities could be accommodated into citizenship—and for some even exemplified its promises. By the antebellum period, however, disability was becoming a powerful, racialized tool of civic exclusion and, by the century’s end, a target for eugenic elimination. Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship tells the story of how this dramatic transformation occurred.
Sari Altschuler is associate professor of English and founding director of the Health, Humanities, and Society Program at Northeastern University. She is the author of Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship (Penn Press, 2026) and The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States (Penn Press, 2018), as well as coeditor with Jonathan Metzl and Priscilla Wald of Keywords for Health Humanities (NYU Press, 2023). With David Weimer she directs Touch This Page! Making Sense of the Ways We Read, a multi-local and online exhibition about the multisensory experiences of reading, which won the Library Company’s Innovation Award in 2019.
Available for purchase at Penn Press.
By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2025) puts the history of disability into conversation with the history of books. Guided by the experiences of the first generation of blind people to learn to read by touch, this book explores the ways in which raised-print books changed not only individual lives but also nineteenth-century culture.
Vanessa Warne is a Professor in the Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media at the University of Manitoba (Treaty One Territory). Her current research explores the intersection of the history of craft and the history of disability. She has published widely on nineteenth-century literature and disability, including serving as the co-editor of a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly on blindness studies. She has co-hosted two international conferences on critical blindness studies, is a co-creator of the Crafting Communities Project, and a co-host of the Victorian Samplings podcast.
Available for purchase at University of Michigan Press.
Time
October 15, 2026 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm(GMT-04:00)
15oct5:30 pm9:00 pm12th Annual Lecture in Honor of John C. Van Horne, with Michael J. Lewis
Event Details
12th Annual Lecture in Honor of John C. Van Horne, with Michael J. Lewis Thursday, October 15, 2026 Franklin Hall at the American Philosophical Society
Event Details
12th Annual Lecture in Honor of John C. Van Horne, with Michael J. Lewis
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Franklin Hall at the American Philosophical Society
Join us in-person or virtually, for a conversation with author and historian Michael J. Lewis about the history of Philadelphia’s great libraries. Lewis’s books include Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), American Art and Architecture (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), and the prize-winning August Reichensperger: The Politics of the German Gothic Revival (MIT Press, 1993). He was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (2000-2001) and in 2008 received a Guggenheim Fellowship to support the completion of City of Refuge (2016), his study of millennial Utopias.
Help us celebrate Dr. John C. Van Horne’s legacy of education and scholarship by joining us at the free public lecture and book signing, members-only reception, and private dinner immediately following the event.
Time
October 15, 2026 5:30 pm - 9:00 pm(GMT-04:00)
More upcoming events here.
Join Our Mailing List!
Thank you for joining the The Library Company of Philadelphia mailing list. We look forward to keeping you informed.
By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact