Acclaimed Rare Books Scholar to Present Lecture at Lafayette

Michael Suarez
Contributed photo

Michael F. Suarez, S.J., director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, will present a talk, “The Rare, The Medium-Rare, and The Well-Done: Thinking about Books, Microchips, and Libraries as the Skillman Turns 50” at 4:30 p.m. next Wednesday, Oct. 9 in the Gendebien Room of Skillman Library at Lafayette College.

The event is free and open to the public.

Suarez is a distinguished scholar and speaker in the fields of book history, bibliography, and 18th century English literature and was co-editor of the Oxford Companion to the Book (2010), a million-word reference work on all aspects of book history from the invention of writing to e-books. It was chosen as a best book of the year by the Times Literary Supplement.

He is currently co-editor of the eight-volume Oxford University Press edition of The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins and serves as editor-in-chief of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, one of the largest digital humanities projects extant today.

A Jesuit priest, Suarez has taught at Fordham University and Campion Hall, Oxford University. He holds four masters degrees and a Doctor of Philosophy in English from Oxford. In 2014-15, he will hold the J.R. Lyell Readership in Bibliography at Oxford University. A former Marshall Scholar, he has won awards for his poetry, as well as for bibliography and literary criticism.

The event is sponsored by the Schlueter Lecture Series with support from the Friends of Skillman Library, the Department of English, and the Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Studies Program at Lafayette. The 2013-14 academic year marks the 50th anniversary of expanded facilities at Skillman Library.

His talk is the 2013 Paul and June Schlueter Lecture in the Art of the Book. The Schlueter Lecture Series was established in 2007 by Drs. Paul and June Schlueter in support of Skillman Library’s Special Collections.

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