CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/1/2024

Hot book alert! 'Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy' is out now from the Morgan Library & Museum

“She knows more about rare books than any other American. She has spent $42,000 for a single volume and outwitted a rich duke at an auction. Her opinion on Caxton editions is sought by the greatest scholars. She is chic, vivacious and interesting, in fact, a ‘dandy, wholesome American girl.’ … She wears her hair long and does not use glasses, runs to Europe on secret missions and is the terror of continental collectors’ agents. Her name is Belle Green [sic].” So wrote the Chicago Tribune on August 11, 1912. A visionary Black woman who passed as white while rising to become the world’s most respected collector of rare books, Greene was the subject of the bestselling 2021 historical novel The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Here, the notoriously stylish, sophisticated and secretive Morgan librarian is pictured in a 1911 portrait by Clarence H. White. Both the photograph and the quotation above are reproduced from our own 2024 blockbuster, Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy, published to accompany the exhibition on view now at the Morgan Library & Museum. Featuring 175 reproductions of Greene, the library, her travels and the items she collected, this 304-page hardcover offers a panoramic, scholarly portrait of Greene as collector, library executive and woman of the world.