News Release

The Book Club of California and San Francisco Public Library have jointly published a photographic history of the literary inscriptions from the old Main Library, Inscriptions at the Old Public Library of San Francisco ( ©2003). Edited by Jack W. Stauffacher, this limited edition collector's item will be available at a publication celebration and book signing on Saturday, April 12 at 1:00 p.m. in the 6th floor Skylight Gallery of the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street in the Civic Center.

This book, honoring the old Main Library's inspirational quotations and author name inscriptions, includes essays by four internationally recognized writers and artists, including historian Gray Brechin, British stone cutter and type designer Michael Harvey and type designer Sumner Stone, placing the inscriptions in context historically, technically, aesthetically and architecturally. Photographer Dennis Letbetter captured images of the interior and exterior inscriptions in March 1997, prior to the reconfiguration of the Old Main into the new Asian Art Museum.

Edward Robeson Taylor, a former mayor, library trustee, physician and poet, and one of the founders of the Book Club of California, selected the twenty-four interior quotations as well as the exterior author's names from classical and contemporary sources. The beautiful Beaux-Arts building, designed by architect George Kelham in 1915, did not include sources for the interior quotations. Books Arts and Special Collections Librarian Andrea Grimes, who wrote the preface to Inscriptions, tracked down twenty-two of the sources, with the help of colleagues. Two still remain anonymous. As most of the quotations were adapted or modified from their original sources, Grimes notes that the attributions could be open to interpretation.

The inscriptions include testaments on how to live one's life, such as A GOOD CONSCIENCE IS THE TESTIMONY OF A GOOD LIFE AND THE REWARD OF IT (Thomas à Kempis) and BVY WHAT THOU HAST NO NEED OF AND ERE LONG THOV SHALT SELL THY NECESSITIES (Benjamin Franklin).

Book-related inscriptions include HANDLE A BOOK AS A BEE DOES A FLOWER EXTRACT ITS SWEETS BVT DO NOT INJVRE IT (Charles Caleb Colton) and IN BOOKS LIES THE SOVL OF THE WHOLE PAST TIME: THE ARTCVLATED AVDIBLE VOICE OF THE PAST (Thomas Carlyle).

Inscriptions can be purchased at Book Bay at the Main or ordered through the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center, San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, California 94102. The cost is $55.00 plus applicable California sales tax, payable to Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library.

Support for this publication came from the Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library.

For more information, please call 415.557.4560.