Selected Prize, Diamond in the Rough of NYT Sunday Books
The Belle Da Costa Greene vignette seems like the runaway; the story recalls a librarian “passing” for white as the personal literary taster for Pierrepont Morgan.
Among the tastier parts is the clash of bookish yearnings and identity–
She was the child of “two African-American parents of mixed ancestry,” and her birth certificate identified her as “colored.” But this label did not square with her ambitions. From a young age, she had a “fascination with illuminated manuscripts” and dreamed of becoming a librarian.
-NYTimes, 7/23
But what of her gender? It is least of all hinted at by the pairing of her “socialite” status and the developing field of rare book collecting, and then the bombshell toward the end of the passage quoting the biographer: “socializing was expected as part of her job.” AHH, there it is.
