Art is never the voice of a country, it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction...
-Eudora Welty
Mission & History
The mission of The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction is to promote the reading, writing, and enjoyment of literature. To accomplish this, the Library acquires works of fiction and related non-fiction and circulates these works to its members, provides low-cost work-space to individual writers and non-profit literary organizations, and produces and presents programs of literary interest.
The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction was founded in 1820 by merchants and their clerks before the advent of public libraries. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was thriving as one of the foremost cultural institutions in the United States, with an extraordinary collection of books in the humanities, and a popular lecture program that featured such renowned speakers as William Makepeace Thackeray, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain. The Library offered classes on many subjects and was considered a meeting place for social and educational pursuits.
The Library currently focuses on collecting and lending fiction, both literary and popular, presenting literary programs for the general public, and renting low-cost space to writers and other literary organizations. It has developed one of the best collections of fiction in the United States and had benefited from six National Endowment for the Humanities grants for literary programming in the past ten years. The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction is a not-for-profit institution classified by the Internal Revenue Service as a public charity under the statute 501 (c) 3. Contributions to the Library are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law.
from the New-York Commercial Advertiser November 2, 1820
Board of Directors
Betty Kelly Sargent , Chairman
Peter Ginna
, President
Jessica Weber, Vice President
James W. Stevens, Treasurer
Sharen Benenson, Secretary
Nancy Dunnan
Nan A. Talese
Gabrielle Bamberger
Nick Brumm
Claudia Deutschmann
Mary M. Luria
Lispet N. Roland
John Searles
Staff
Noreen Tomassi
Executive Director
noreen@mercantilelibrary.org
Brenda Wegener
Head Librarian
brenda@mercantilelibrary.org
Kristin Henley
Executive Assistant
kristin@mercantilelibrary.org
Mary Collins
Special Collections Librarian
mary@mercantilelibrary.org
Burton Greenhouse
Accounting
greenhousb@aol.com