Folger Book Club

Folger's informal Book Club is free and open to all. Our picks range from historical fiction to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, encompassing a wide variety of genres—all sourced from a different local, independent bookstore partner each month. Folger Book Club explores connections between contemporary fiction and the Folger’s mission, collection, and programming.

Each session begins with a guest speaker exploring that month’s pick and highlighting items from the Folger collection related to the plot and themes of the novel. After the presentation, participants will be broken into smaller groups for breakout discussions, moderated by a team of staff and volunteers.

OCTOBER SELECTION:

Edith Holler
by Edward Carey

NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

The witty and entrancing story of a young woman trapped in a ramshackle English playhouse–and the mysterious figure who threatens the theater’s very survival

The year is 1901. England’s beloved queen has died, and her aging son has finally taken the throne. In the eastern city of Norwich, bright and inquisitive young Edith Holler spends her days among the boisterous denizens of the Holler Theatre, warned by her domineering father that the playhouse will literally tumble down if she should ever leave its confines. Fascinated by tales of the city she knows only from afar, she decides to write a play of her own: a stage adaptation of the legend of Mawther Meg, a monstrous figure said to have used the blood of countless children to make the local delicacy known as Beetle Spread. But when her father suddenly announces his engagement to a peculiar, imposing woman named Margaret Unthank, heir to the actual Beetle Spread fortune, Edith scrambles to protect her father, the theatre, and her play–the one thing that’s truly hers–from the newcomer’s sinister designs.

Teeming with unforgettable characters and illuminated by the author’s trademark fantastical illustrations, Edith Holler is a surprisingly modern fable of one young woman’s struggle to escape her family’s control–and to reveal inconvenient truths about the way children are used.