"Facing the Late Victorians features portraits of dozens of well-known figures such as George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and John Singer Sargent, who dominated the world of the arts, along with pioneering children's book authors and illustrators, such as E. Nesbit and Kate Greenaway. Many of these are rarely seen images, such as the unpublished sketches of themselves that Rudyard Kipling and Aubrey Beardsley included in letters to friends; the comical drawing of William Morris that the painter Edward Burne-Jones added to his guest-book; or Max Beerbohm's savage caricature of Oscar Wilde's head, which seems to decay before our eyes faster than did Dorian Gray's face. But the show ranges widely to include photographs and drawings of many lesser lights whose work was important in advancing British art and literature, including once-celebrated writers such as the feminist novelist Olive Schreiner and the Catholic poet Alice Meynell, as well as the artists Walter Sickert and William Rothenstein.

"The show draws its eighty items from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, which has been assembled over the past thirty years by one of the premier authorities on nineteenth-century book history. That collection of first editions, presentation copies, authors' correspondence, and works of art and design is on loan to the University of Delaware Library. Margaret D. Stetz, the exhibition's curator, is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware.

"Facing the Late Victorians is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated book by Margaret D. Stetz, published by the University of Delaware Press. Copies are available on site at the Grolier Club or may be purchased from Associated University Presses, 2010 Eastpark Boulevard, Cranbury, NJ 08512; Phone (609) 655-4770, e-mail aup440@aol.com, web www.aupresses.com (ISBN: 978-0-87413-992-1).

"Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection will be on view at the Grolier Club through April 26, 2008. Hours: Monday-Saturday, 10 AM -- 5 PM. Open to the public free of charge. For more information call Megan Smith, Exhibitions Coordinator at the Grolier Club at (212) 838-6690 or go to www.grolierclub.org."