Mark Samuels Lasner

Collector, bibliographer, and typographer Mark Samuels Lasner is senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library. A graduate of Connecticut College, he is the author of The Bookplates of Aubrey Beardsley (Rivendale Press, 2008), A Bibliography of Enoch Soames (Rivendale Press, 1999), The Yellow Book: A Checklist and Index (Eighteen Nineties Society, 1998), A Selective Checklist of the Published Work of Aubrey Beardsley (Thomas G. Boss Fine Books, 1995), and William Allingham: A Bibliographical Study (Holmes Publishing Co., 1993); as well as co-authored (with Margaret D. Stetz) books such as England in the 1880s: Old Guard and Avant-Garde (University of Virginia Press, 1989) and England in the 1890s: Literary Publishing at the Bodley Head (Georgetown U Press, 1990). His articles and notes have appeared in the Book Collector, Browning Institute Studies, Notes and Queries, and other journals. He has organized or co-curated exhibitions held at the University of Virginia Library; Georgetown University Library; the Houghton Library and the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Bryn Mawr College Library; Virginia Commonwealth University; Drew University; and the Grolier Club.

Mark Samuels Lasner was the principal organizer of “Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites,” a conference and related exhibitions held at the University of Delaware, Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, and the Delaware Art Museum in October 2010. More recently, he co-curated with Margaret D. Stetz the exhibition, “Everything is Going On Brilliantly: Oscar Wilde and Philadelphia,” held January–May 2015 at the Rosenbach Museum and Library.

Active in numerous bibliophile and bibliographical organizations, Samuels Lasner was the 2003 recipient of the Sir Thomas More medal from the University of San Francisco, awarded to honor the spirit of “private collecting, a public benefit.”

The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection is associated with the Special Collections Department of the University of Delaware Library, but is privately owned. The collection, housed in the Morris Library, focuses on British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and on the writers and illustrators of the 1890s. Its holdings comprise more than 9,000 printed books, manuscripts, letters, artworks, and ephemera. Access is by appointment only.