She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection.īut Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR! Named a Notable Book of the Year by the Washington Post!Ī remarkable novel about J. She had to be tired every day when she went home and laid her head down.The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Good Morning America* Book Club Pick! It was a magical life that she lived in the sense of a fairy-tale life in some ways, but she was juggling a lot of balls. Sometimes today we call it code-switching. You run over there and you’re one person, you run over there, you’re another person. She had to do all of those things, and the only way you can do that is through magic. She could hang with the Vanderbilts uptown, or she could just go downtown in the Village and smoke a cigarette and drink dark beer. And one of the things Marie and I love to say is, she was an uptown or a downtown girl. She had to be ten different women to JP Morgan, because not only was she of course his employee, she was his confidante, she was his advisor sometimes. Can you tell us a little about how she managed all of that? Belle has many competing responsibilities to her mother and to her siblings, to her father and other Black men and women who could benefit from her example if she were able to work openly, and to herself. Julie: So I want to ask a little bit more about the complexities of Belle’s life. They discuss Belle’s upbringing, her intimate relationship with JP Morgan, her motivations and struggles, and the sacrifices she made in order to conceal her identity. In this episode of Book Dreams, Julie and Eve talk about Belle with Victoria Christopher Murray and Marie Benedict, co-authors of the novel The Personal Librarian-a New York Times bestseller and Good Morning America Book Club Pick-which gives us a fully formed sense of inner Belle. Greener, one of the most prominent Black civil rights activists of his day. But that extravagant personal style was a mask meant to distract the public from the real Belle, who was in fact the daughter of Richard T. Constantly featured in newspapers and magazines, she was widely known for her gorgeous clothes and her glittering personality. One of the most powerful people in the art world, she traveled the globe, buying art and manuscripts at auction and socializing with Astors and Vanderbilts. She was responsible for shaping the museum’s collections, and her vision was no less than to tell the history and importance of the early printed word. We know a lot about public-facing Belle: she was JP Morgan’s personal librarian from 1905 until his death in 1913, and she continued to build and direct The Morgan Library until shortly before her own death in 1950. And, until two decades after her death, no one outside her family knew she was passing as white. One of the most prominent and influential librarians in history.
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