Grolier Club. Committee on Special Functions.

The Grolier Club was founded in 1884 January 23 by a group of seven New York City book collectors with the object, as stated in its constitution, "of literary study and promotion of the arts pertaining to the production of books." The Committee on Special Functions is one of the Club's standing committees. Its charge is to arrange for occasional small dinners with appropriate speakers and other special events. The Committee's activities date back to 1945, although it did not issue separate annual reports until the early 1950s. For some years small exhibitions were arranged specifically for these dinner meetings. Between 1945 and 1958 the Club's Curator, George L. McKay, assisted the Committee in the organization of the dinners. Information appears in these records about the Bowsers, an informal organization developed within the Club that met for convivial evenings between ca. 1939 and 1949, with sporadic activity thereafter. The name comes from "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern" by John Keats.