Author Emily Sneff joins us to explore how the Declaration was communicated to people in the new nation and around the Atlantic world and reveal the stories of the many people involved in the process of declaring independence, from printers to soldiers to diplomats to translators.
Published for the 250th anniversary of the United States, When the Declaration of Independence Was News focuses on the nation’s founding document at the moment of its creation in 1776, before anyone knew what the legacy of the Declaration would be or if the United States would win the war against Great Britain. The author, Emily Sneff, joins us to explore how the Declaration was communicated to people in the new nation and around the Atlantic world and reveal the stories of the many people involved in the process of declaring independence, from printers to soldiers to diplomats to translators.
Dr. Emily Sneff is an early American historian and leading expert on the Declaration of Independence. She earned her Ph.D. in History from William & Mary. She is a consulting curator for exhibitions marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration at the Museum of the American Revolution and Historic Trappe. She is the author of When the Declaration of Independence Was News.
Emily will sign copies of her book, available for purchase through Head House Books, after the talk. Plan to stay for light refreshments and to try your hand at making a commemorative print on a portable 19th century printing press supplied by Common Press at the University of Pennsylvania!
This is also a great chance to visit the Athenaeum, a unique and historical subscription library established in 1814 at a time when the free public library system did not exist and collections of books, available for reading or research, were still mostly limited to institutions, schools or colleges.
As part of the Penn Libraries America 250 programming, join the Common Press for The Typography of Independence, a year-long program celebrating the papermaking and printing techniques that created the first edition of the Declaration of Independence.