Nicholas Andrew Basbanes (born May 25, 1943, in Lowell, Massachusetts) is an American author who writes and lectures about authors, books, and book culture. His subjects include the "eternal passion for books" (A Gentle Madness); the history and future of libraries (Patience & Fortitude);[1] the "willful destruction of books" and the "determined effort to rescue them" (A Splendor of Letters);[2] "the power of the printed word to stir the world" (Every Book Its Reader);[3] the invention of paper and its effect on civilization (On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History),[4] and an exploration of Longfellow's life and art (Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).[5]
Discharged from active duty in 1971, Basbanes went to work as a general assignment reporter for The Evening Gazette in Worcester, Massachusetts, specializing in investigative journalism.[6] In 1978, he was appointed books editor of a sister publication, the Worcester Sunday Telegram, a full-time position that included writing a weekly column.
Due to cost cutting measures, the Telegram, then known as the Telegram & Gazette, removed its book section in 1990.[6] When Basbanes left the newspaper later in 1991 to complete his first book, he continued writing the column and distributed it through Literary Features Syndicate, an agency he formed that placed it in more than thirty publications nationwide.[7] He writes the "Gently Mad" column for Fine Books & Collections magazine and lectures on book-related subjects.[8]
Books
Basbanes' first book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, was published in 1995. The topic was originally dismissed as too arcane for a general readership by many New York editors who had passed on the opportunity to publish it, but the book later found sizable success with multiple printings.[9]Michael Dirda of The Washington Post called it an "ingratiating and altogether enjoyable book", praising the book's "wonderful gallery of modern eccentrics" despite its occasional lapses in literary history.[10]A Gentle Madness was named a New York Times notable book of the year[11] and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction for 1995.[12] In 2010, Allison Hoover Bartlett writing for the Wall Street Journal named it one of the most influential works about book collecting published in the twentieth century.[13]
By 2003, with the publication of A Splendor of Letters, Basbanes was already acknowledged as a leading authority on books and book culture. One reviewer commented, "No other writer has traced the history of the book so thoroughly or so engagingly,"[14] and Yale University Press chose him to write its 2008 centennial history, A World of Letters, which chronicled the inside stories of its classic books from conception to production.[15]
Basbanes' ninth book, On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History, is not only a consideration of paper as a principal medium for the transmission of text over the past ten centuries, but also a wider examination of the ubiquitous material itself.[4] The eight-year project, which was released in October 2013, was supported in part by the award of a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship in 2008.[16] It was named a notable book by the American Library Association,[17] and was one of three finalists for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.[18]
In July 2015, Basbanes received one of the inaugural grants from the Public Scholar program of the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of his tenth book, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 2020. The Public Scholar program is designed to promote the publication of scholarly nonfiction books for general audiences.[19]Cross of Snow was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2020 by the Christian Science Monitor,[20] one of the Books of the Year 2020 by TLS[21] and was selected as an Honors Book in the non-fiction category by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.[22]
Litigation
On January 5, 2024, Basbanes and Nicholas Gage, nonfiction book author and journalist, sued Microsoft and OpenAI in a proposed class action complaint filed in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.[23] The lawsuit alleges that the defendants “stole” writers’ copyrighted works to help build AI chatbot ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence system they say is worth billions of dollars. The class is defined as all nonfiction writers in the United States, many of them trained as journalists, “who are authors or legal beneficial owners” of copyrights that have or are being used by the defendants to “train their large language models” and it estimates the class to include tens of thousands of people. It seeks damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed. This lawsuit follows several other suits and letters of complaint filed alleging copyright infringement not only by these defendants, but also by Meta Platforms, Alphabet and IBM.[24] These suits by authors and performers, and actions by The Authors Guild, The Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are seeking protection for creators over AI use.[25]
Considered too similar to lawsuits filed late last year, this January complaint has been consolidated into a case brought by other nonfiction writers as well as fiction writers represented by the Authors Guild.[26]
Open AI issued a statement, "We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models."
Archives
The Cushing Memorial Library and Archives of Texas A&M University acquired Basbanes' papers as the Nicholas A. Basbanes Collection in December 2015. The collection includes archives of Basbanes' professional career as an author and literary journalist, as well as a significant portion of his personal library. Highlights of the collection include research materials related to the writing of his nine books and approximately eight hundred books inscribed to him over the course of his career.[27]
Two selections of his literary journalism were collected in Editions & Impressions (2007) and About the Author (2010).[7]
"The Bard Out Loud", Bates Magazine, June 2007, reprinted from The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them (Gotham, 2006).
^William A. Davis, "Bible for Bibliophiles: Basbanes' 'A Gentle Madness' Confounds the Naysayers", Boston Globe, June 26, 1996, reprinted Bates Magazine, Spring 1997. [3] and John Baker, "A Mania for Books," Publishers Weekly, vol. 252, issue 45, November 11, 2005. [4]
John Baker, "A Mania for Books", Publishers Weekly, vol. 252, issue 45, November 11, 2005.[11]
William F.Meehan III,"First Impression: An Interview with Author and Bibliophile Nicholas A. Basbanes", Indiana Libraries, volume 25, number 3, 2006.[12]
Michael M. Jones,"Reamed Out: PW Talks with Nicholas A. Basbanes," Publishers Weekly, August 23, 2013.[13]
Bob Minzesheimer,"Five Great Books about Libraries", USA Today, May 8, 2013.[14]
Helen Gallagher, "On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History," New York Journal of Books, October 15, 2013.[15]
Ron Charles, "Nicholas Basbanes on the Enduring Importance of Paper," The Washington Post, The Style Blog, October 28, 2013. [16]
Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Progress, Exhibition of the Rarest Books in the World at the University of Dayton, October 2, 2014.[17]
Sohn JiAe, Korea.net, "Hanji Traditional Paper Beloved Around the World," December 22, 2014. [18]
Stephanie McFeeters,The Boston Globe, Names, "Local Writers Will Share National Endowment for the Humanities Grant," July 29, 2015.[19]
Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times, Jacket Copy, "Academic Nonfiction for the Masses? NEH Awards $1.7 million in Public Scholar grants," July 29, 2015.[20]
Michael S. Rosenwald, Washington Post, Local, "Take note: The Paper Industry is Planning a Big Comeback," July 29, 2015.[21]
“Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” Publishers Weekly, April 9, 2020.[22]
Christoph Irmscher, The Wall Street Journal, Books/Bookshelf, "‘Cross of Snow’ Review: Our Poet of Loneliness," May 22, 2020. [23]
Charles McGrath, The New York Times, Nonfiction, "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: America's No. 1 Literary Celebrity," June 4, 2020.[24]
Michael Dirda, The Washington Post, Books Review, "Beloved, patriotic, sentimental: A look at the life and poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," June 3, 2020.[25]
James Marcus, The New Yorker, Books, "What is There to Love About Longfellow?," June 8 & 15, 2020 Issue. [26]
Herman Sutter, Library Journal, "Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," June 2020. [27]
Publishers Weekly, "Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," April 9, 2020. [28]
BBC Sounds, Free Thinking, "Paper: An Exploration of the Cultural and Social History of Paper," January 19, 2022. [29]
Boston Athenaeum, Nicholas Basbanes in conversation with Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen about their book "The Library: A Fragile History," January 21, 2022. [30]
Kevin Lind, Columbia Journalism Review, The Media Today, "A Bibliophile Takes on Big AI," August 15, 2024. [31]
Foreword to The Quotable Book Lover, edited by Ben Jacobs and Helena Hjalmarsson (New York: The Lyons Press, 1999). The quotations in Chapter 10, "Collecting Books: A Special Section by Nicholas A. Basbanes, " pp. 209–228, were compiled from A Gentle Madness.
Nicholas A. Basbanes,"The Evening Star and the Bobby Baker Story: A Case Study," Thesis (M.A.), Pennsylvania State University.[32]
Lectures
November 14, 2013, the Strand bookstore in New York City, "Nicholas Basbanes on the Strange and Fascinating History of People and Paper," Video on YouTube
October 12, 2015, Book Club of California, San Francisco, "Material Culture and the Writing of a Dual Biography", Video on YouTube
October 7, 2017, Longfellow House, Cambridge, Massachusetts, the 2017 James M. Shea Lecture presented in celebration of the 200th birthday of Fanny Appleton Longfellow,Video on YouTube
July 13, 2020, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, "A Conversation with Nicholas Basbanes on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," Video on YouTube
