COLUMBIA
LIBRARY
COLUMNS
 

A Liber Amicorum for G. M.
 

KENNETH A. LOHF
 

vN Tuesday evening. May 11, 1954, seven hundred writers,
critics, illustrators and printers gathered at the \A''aldorf-
Astoria Hotel's Starlight Roof in NewYork to celebrate
the silver anniversary of the Limited Editions Club. The founder
and director of the Club, George Macy, was official host and mas¬
ter of ceremonies, and the guest of honor, the poet Robert Frost,
gave the principal talk of the festive evening. Ten authors—among
them Carl Sandburg, Rachel Carson and Frost himself—received
silver medals in recognition of their contributions to the world of
books over the preceding quarter of a century. Fredric March, the
actor and friend of the iMacys, read the citations for these awards,
as well as for the fifteen illustrators, designers and printers wdiose
work was also honored; and Florence Eldridge (Mrs. March) and
Helen Macy presented the medals.

The sumptuous anniversary dinner consisted of dishes inspired
by famous passages in literature ranging from the Old Testament
to Sir Walter Scott, and each course was accompanied by a suitable
vintage wine from 1929, the year the Club was founded on the
eve of the stock market crash that resulted in the Depression. After
the dinner, the Frost talk and the awards, there remained only one
other ceremony before the evening's celebrations were concluded
—a toast to George Macy, at midnight, on the arrival of his fifty-