October 12, 2012

Related to the 2012 Victorians Institute Annual Conference, to be held at Virginia Commonwealth University Oct. 19-20, VCU Libraries presents  "Robert Browning, 1812-1889: A Bicentenary Exhibition from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection." This exhibition will run from Oct. 18 through Dec. 7 in Special Collections and Archives on the fourth floor of James Branch Cabell Library. 

Featured in the exhibition are vintage papers, ephemera, and other materials pertaining to Robert Browning, widely regarded one of the greatest poets of the Victorian period and a forefather of modern poetry. The exhibition is curated by Ashley Rye, graduate assistant in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection and a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Delaware.  

On Thursday, Oct. 18, an opening reception will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the exhibition space and Mark Samuels Lasner will give an introductory talk at 7:30 p.m. Lasner is senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library, as well as an author, collector, bibliographer, typographer and authority on the Victorian period. Lasner's extensive collection is on loan to the University of Delaware Library.

Special Collections and Archives is open Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will also be open on Saturday, October 20, from noon to 2 p.m. for a special showing of the exhibition for the Victorians Institute Conference. Running simultaneously with the exhibition will be a fourth floor gallery show of steampunk comic books and comic art from the VCU's Comic Arts Collection. Steampunk, a sub-genre of science fiction, is heavily influenced by the industrialization movement of the 19th century, a setting where steam power is the dominate energy source. Stories are often set in alternative histories of the British Victorian or the American wild west eras.

< Previous  Next >