The club was founded on January 29, 1887, with the following intention:
The objects shall be to promote an interest in, and a love for whatever will tend to make literature attractive as given in the form of printed and illustrated volumes, to mutually assist in making researches and collections of first and rare editions, and to promote elegance in the production of Odd Volumes.
The term ''odd'' is an eighteenth-century usage meaning ''various'' or ''unmatched''. By extension, each member of the club is an odd volume.
The Sette of Odd Volumes, an English bibliophile dining-club founded in 1878, was the inspiration for the organization. George Clulow, President of the Sette of Odd Volumes, London, suggested the name ''The Club of Odd Volumes''.
The club began primarily as a dinner club, complementing established social clubs like the
Somerset Club
The Somerset Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded perhaps as early as 1826. It is a center of Boston Brahmin families - New England's upper class - and is known as one of the big four clubs in the country, the other th ...
Harvard Club
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan cler ...
. The group conducts lectures, meets regularly for dinners and lunches, collects and publishes books, and develops literary exhibits.
The club hosts authors, book designers, artists, politicians, printers, and people prominent in creative fields.
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...
gave a talk on ''Books on Magic and the Theater''. Author
Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.
Life
Amy Lowell was born on Febru ...
and actress
Ada Dwyer Russell
Ada Dwyer Russell (1863–1952) was an American actress who performed on stage in Broadway and London and became the muse to her poet lover Amy Lowell.
Brief biography
Dwyer was born in 1863 to a recently baptized Mormon Salt Lake City bookkeep ...
were guests of the Club in 1923, when Lowell gave a talk on John Keats.
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
was a guest at the Club, at a private luncheon, April 1949.
Building
The club has been at 77 Mt. Vernon Street in Beacon Hill since it purchased the building 1936. The building was the home of
Sarah Wyman Whitman
Sarah de St. Prix Wyman Whitman (1842–1904) was an American stained glass artist, painter, and book cover designer. Successful at a time when few women had professional art careers, she founded her own firm, Lily Glass Works. Her stained glass ...
. Prior to 1936, it rented the buildings across the street at 50, 52 and 54 Mt. Vernon Street.
Library and publications
Between its founding and 1900, the club expanded its membership and activities to include an active exhibition and publishing program as well as the maintenance of a library. Members in the Club of Odd Volumes, currently limited to a maximum of 87 (men only), are often associated with Boston's universities, museums and libraries. They often include rare and antiquarian book collectors, curators, scholars, printers and typophiles. The club continues to offer exhibitions on a wide variety of themes, including the printing arts, typography and antiquarian books.
The club has a substantial library of antiquarian books and an archive of letterpress printing.
The collection, only accessible by club members, has about 2,200 titles.
Publications
;Internal publications
Representative examples of the Club’s yearbooks and bylaws
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;Works of authors and poets
The following is a short selection of published works:
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Notable members
Notable members include
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Theodore L. de Vinne
Theodore Low De Vinne (December 25, 1828 – February 16, 1914) was an American printer and scholarly author on typography. Considered "the leading commercial printer of his day," De Vinne did much for the improvement of American printing an ...
William Addison Dwiggins
William Addison Dwiggins (June 19, 1880 – December 25, 1956), was an American type designer, calligrapher, and book designer. He attained prominence as an illustrator and commercial artist, and he brought to the designing of type and books so ...
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Worthington C. Ford
Worthington Chauncey Ford (February 15, 1858 – March 7, 1941) was an American historian, archivist and editor of a number of collections of documents from early American history. He served in a variety of government positions: first, as the ch ...
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Edwin Davis French
Edwin Davis French (1851–1906) was a bookplate engraver, who produced at least 330 engravings beginning in 1893.
Born in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, his artistic career had begun in 1869 with silver engraving for the Whiting Manufact ...
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Wendell Garrett
Wendell D. Garrett (October 9, 1929 – November 14, 2012) was an American historian, expert on Americana and American-origin decorative arts and editor.
Early life and education
Born in Los Angeles, Garrett received a bachelor's degree in organi ...
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Frederic Goudy
Frederic William Goudy (, March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and ...
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Curtis Guild Jr.
Curtis Guild Jr. (February 2, 1860 – April 6, 1915) was an American journalist, soldier, diplomat and politician from Massachusetts. He was the 43rd Governor of Massachusetts, serving from 1906 to 1909. Prior to his election as governor, Guil ...
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Henry-Russell Hitchcock
Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987) was an American architectural historian, and for many years a professor at Smith College and New York University. His writings helped to define the characteristics of modernist architecture.
Early life
He ...
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Henry Oscar Houghton
Henry Oscar Houghton (; April 30, 1823 – August 25, 1895) was an American publisher, co-founder of Houghton Mifflin, and a mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Biography
Houghton was born into a poor family in Sutton, Vermont. At age thirteen, ...
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Dard Hunter
William Joseph "Dard" Hunter (November 29, 1883 – February 20, 1966) was an American authority on printing, paper, and papermaking, especially by hand, using sixteenth century tools and techniques. He is known for, among other things, the prod ...
Frederick William Lehmann
Frederick William Lehmann (February 28, 1853 – September 12, 1931) was a prominent American lawyer, politician, United States Solicitor General, and rare book collector.
Biography
He was born February 28, 1853 in Prussia. His father Friedr ...
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Arthur D. Little
Arthur D. Little is an international management consulting firm originally headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1886 and formally incorporated in 1909 by Arthur Dehon Little, an MIT chemist who had discovered acetate. ...
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A. Lawrence Lowell
Abbott Lawrence Lowell (December 13, 1856 – January 6, 1943) was an American educator and legal scholar. He was President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933.
With an "aristocratic sense of mission and self-certainty," Lowell cut a large f ...
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known ...
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J. P. Morgan, Jr.
John Pierpont Morgan Jr. (September 7, 1867 – March 13, 1943) was an American banker, finance executive, and philanthropist. He inherited the family fortune and took over the business interests including J.P. Morgan & Co. after his father J. ...
* Fred Ball Rice -
Rice & Hutchins
Rice & Hutchins, Inc. was a shoe manufacturing and wholesaling company based in Boston, Massachusetts begun as a partnership in 1866, and later incorporated in 1892. By 1916 the company was considered to be among the largest shoe manufacturers in ...
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
Robert Gould Shaw II
Robert Gould Shaw II (sometimes referred to as RGS II) (June 16, 1872 – March 29, 1930) was a wealthy landowner, international polo player of the Myopia Hunt Club and socialite of the leisure class in the greater Boston area of Massachusetts. He ...
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Daniel Berkeley Updike
Daniel Berkeley Updike (February 14, 1860 – December 29, 1941) was an American printer and historian of typography. In 1880 he joined the publishers Houghton, Mifflin & Company, of Boston as an errand boy. He worked for the firm's Riverside ...
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Walter Muir Whitehill
Walter Muir Whitehill (1905 – 1978) was an American writer, historian, medievalist, and the Director and Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum from 1946 to 1973.Current biography yearbook H.W. Wilson Company - 1961 "The only child of the Reverend Wal ...
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George Parker Winship
George Parker Winship (29 July 1871 – 22 June 1952) was an American librarian, author, teacher, and bibliographer born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1893.
Early life and career
Went from the Somerville La ...
Gallery
Image:1889 Club of OddVolumes exhibit at BostonArtclub.png, Exhibition at the Boston Art Club, 1889
Image:1904 Club of OddVolumes Boston.png, Bookplate, 1904
Image:1911 Club of OddVolumes MtVernonSt Boston.png, ''The Club of Odd Volumes'', image of Mt. Vernon Street building, 1911
See also
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List of American gentlemen's clubs
The following is a list of notable traditional gentlemen's clubs in the United States, including those that are now defunct. Historically, these clubs were exclusively for men, but most (though not all) now admit women.
On exclusivity and as ...