Pickwick Book Club Records
1954-1990
Manuscript Collection #0567- Creator(s)
- Pickwick Book Club
- Physical description
- 0.5 Cubic Feet
- Preferred Citation
- Pickwick Book Club Records (#567), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
- Repository
- ECU Manuscript Collection
- Access
- The collection is open for research.
Records (1954-2007, undated), including documents, meeting minutes, constitution and bylaws, and yearbooks of the Pickwick Book Club of Greenville, North Carolina.
Biographical/historical information
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.
Scope and arrangement
The Pickwick Book Club Records, 1954-2007, consists of correspondence between club members and documents pertaining to club business. 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 yearbook booklets featuring officer lists, committees and brief descriptions of meetings held.
Administrative information
Custodial History
April 2023, .75 cubic feet, meeting minutes, constitution and bylaws, and homemade yearbooks
Source of acquisition
Gift of Mrs. Richard Capwell
Processing information
Encoded by Apex Data Services. Processed 2019 by Faith Harris.
Copyright notice
Literary rights to specific documents are retained by the authors or their descendants in accordance with U.S. copyright law.
Metadata Rights Declaration
This record is made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Creative Commons license.