Records (1954-1990), including minutes, constitution and bylaws, and booklets of the Pickwick Book Club of Greenville, North Carolina.
The name "Pickwick" came from the "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club" (1837), which was Charles Dickens' first novel. The story published under the pseudonym "Boz" was originally designed to be a series of sporting misadventures, to serve as letterpress for the drawings of popular illustrator, Robert Seymour.
The Pickwick Book Club of Greenville, North Carolina, often held meetings at members home, country clubs or libraries. The book club would typically enjoy lunch and a featured guest speaker before the meeting took place. Following lunch, the members would tend to any business necessary. After tending to club business, they would then exchange books and end the meeting. Literature was not the only topic of discussion during the meetings, as they also discussed hobbies, primary education, American folk songs, elections and politics, art.
The Pickwick Book Club Records, 1954-1980, consist of correspondence between club members. The materials also feature meeting minutes that document business covered in each meeting. Also included are membership lists, event records, book purchase forms, data on Gilbert G. Ragland, a faculty member in Education at East Carolina College and hand-crafted booklets featuring officer lists, committees and brief descriptions of meetings held.
April 2023, .75 cubic feet, meeting minutes, constitution and bylaws, and homemade yearbooks
Gift of Mrs. Richard Capwell
Encoded by Apex Data Services. Processed 2019 by Faith Harris.
Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.