Welcome to the Alcuin Society

The Alcuin Society is a voluntary association supported by people who care about the past, present and future of fine books. Founded in 1965 by Geoff Spencer and six other Vancouver bibliophiles, it is the only non-profit organization in Canada dedicated to the entire range of interests related to books and reading. These interests include authorship, publishing, book design and production, bookselling, book buying and collecting, printing, binding, papermaking, calligraphy and illustration.

The Alcuin Society has recently established its own endowment with the Vancouver Foundation. If you would like to help this fund grow and thus provide, in perpetuity, a steady income flow to support the activities of Alcuin please consider making a tax deductible donation of any amount.

News & Announcements

April 3, 2012: Alcuin Book Design Award Winners announced for the best designed books of 2011...see the list of winners and read the blog post.
COACH HOUSE PRESS AS A DIGITAL PIONEER: Talk and Presentation to Stan Bevington coming March 30, 2012.
Robert R. Reid Lifetime Achievement Award winner for 2012 announced!
We're having an online book sale fundraiser with a large lot of generously donated fine hardcover editions from The Folio Society. The Folio Society has been publishing beautiful editions of classic titles since 1947. Also included in this sale are 7 leather-bound books from the Franklin Library, from the late 1970s.
Our Wayzgoose Weekend wrapped up in late October, where we screened "Making Faces", the film produced by p22.com about local type legend Jim Rimmer, and then hosted a printing fair the following Saturday.
We celebrated our annual awards with two events in October, one in Toronto and one in Vancouver.
Just uploaded; our catalogue for the 2010 Alcuin Award winners, designed by our own Markus Fahrner. Available here as a PDF download.
This year's Robert R. Reid award winner announced.
The Winners of our Annual Book Design Competition for Canadian books published in 2010 have been announced.
For the latest news from the Alcuin Society, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog, and you can now follow @Alcuin on Twitter. Of course, becoming a member will also give you a copy of our printed publication Amphora, as well as other special updates. Please consider supporting the society by becoming a member!
For the third year running, the W.A. Deacon Literary Foundation, in partnership with the Bibliographical Society of Canada (BSC) and the Alcuin Society present the National Book Collecting Contest for young Canadians. The Contest is open to all Canadian residents under thirty years of age. Entries must be postmarked no later than 5 March 2012. Complete rules to the contest are available on the Deacon Literary Foundation website.
2011 CODEX Foundation Symposium was held February 2011 in Berkeley, California. This event featured a book fair and symposium, with speakers from around the world, and presentations from our own Jan & Crispin Elsted of The Barbarian Press, and Barbara & Markus Fahrner of Fahrner & Fahrner. For registration and more information, visit: codexfoundation.org
Our latest publication, Takao Tanabe: A tour de force of Letterpress printing is now available
Thanks to all who attended our Vancouver Antiquarian Book Fair. Held Friday and Saturday the 15th and 16th of October, 2010, this was the first book fair to be held in Vancouver since the early 90s. We hope this will become a recurring event! vancouverbookfair.ca View our photo album here.
In conjunction with the Vancouver Antiquarian Book Fair, a free public lecture was held Thursday, October 14, at Pulp Fiction Books, 2422 Main Street (Main & Broadway). Irvin Ungar, San Francisco peninsula based antiquarian bookseller was the speaker. More info here.
Alcuin award winning book tour schedule, across the country and the world. For a complete list of dates and cities of the Alcuin book design winners from 2oo9, see:
http://www.alcuinsociety.com/exhibits/index.html
List of publications offered by the Society.
About the Robert R. Reid Award.
With much "heraldry," may we present the Society's Coat of Arms.
Check out our virtual library on LibraryThing.
Check out the Alcuin Society's online photograph album, which has pictures of events and exhibits, including Book Design Awards.
Found the most amazing web site? Contribute to the Society's custom search engine. Let us know what should be included.