Race, Gender, Wealth, Books: It’s All in “The Personal Librarian,” Flagler Reads Together’s 2022 Pick

“This is a brilliant piece of historical fiction that weaves through one woman’s life telling the story of how she denied her true identity in order to protect herself and her family from racial persecution,” said Flagler County Library Director Holly Albanese. “It focuses on the extraordinary life of Belle da Costa Greene, who was the personal librarian of J.P. Morgan.”

The book was not chosen by the Friends of the Library, as Flagler Reads Together titles were previously–the program was founded by the late Mary Ann Clark in 2001 as a way to bring the county together in a communal act of reading–but by Albanese. (The Friends have had their struggles after the death of some of their leading members. The organization is rebuilding.) The choice this year takes its place along the more thematically searching titles of a program that has had its share of daring, from exploring censorship to lynching to the John Kennedy assassination, if with the occasional safer titles thrown in (Jeffrey Smith’s “The Eagle Has Landed” in 2019, Patrick Smith’s “A Land Remembered” in 2010).

“I wanted to change things up a bit because last year the FRT fell flat and we had little participation,” Albanese said. “Second, because I am a female librarian and while not Black, I have struggled most of my career to be recognized, accepted and hired as a professional librarian. In the end I took the opportunity to celebrate everything about Belle and that includes Black History Month, Women’s History Month and National Library Week which is April 3-9th. I will be leading the book discussion set for March 23rd and look forward to a very lively discussion.”

Other titles considered for this year included Betty White’s “If You Ask Me,” James Patterson’s “E.R. Nurses” and “Suffrage, Women and Untold Stories” by local author Kim Medley.

Belle da Costa Greene isn’t exactly a household name. At least not today. That wasn’t the case in her lifetime.




Greene was recruited from Princeton University. She had been a librarian there starting in 1902, the same year that Woodrow Wilson became president of the university. There is a delicious irony in that, because what Wilson, an unabashed and enthusiastic racist, did not know–he’d have fired her if he did–what her New York Times obituary never mentioned, is that Greene was Black. She was passing herself off as white in what was then the common practice of “passing,” for those who could. Emily Nix and Nancy Qian in their 2015 paper on the subject estimate that “over 19 percent of black males ‘passed’ for white at some point during their lifetime.” (The study focused on men because with women changing names at marriage, it made tracing their lives harder.)

She’d warranted two longish paragraphs in The New York Times when she retired in 1948, eight paragraphs when she died two years later, on page 27. The obituary noted her plush address–535 Park Avenue: anyone who died in that Manhattan Olympus got an obituary of some length–and described her as director of the Morgan Library, as in J.P. Morgan, the financier whose fortune was estimated at over $1.2 billion when he died in 1913. As far as everyone was concerned, she was white–a choice that cost her her family and a chance at having a family of her own: “I’ve always known that, because of my heritage, a traditional relationship would not be possible for me,” she is quoted as saying in the novel, “because a marriage means children, and that is something I cannot hazard. Without the fairer skin of my siblings, I could never risk bearing a child whose skin color might reveal my deception.”




She was “the best known librarian in the country, her obituary read. “As a young woman, well before World War I, she was already a somewhat fabulous figure at auction sales, who had the power to spend $40,000 or more for one book–and exercised it.” She did so for Morgan in 2011 for a copy of Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur” If you were to adjust the value for inflation, that comes out to $1.14 million today. (Rare books and manuscripts these days fetch well over that.)

But she’d fooled Morgan just as she’d fooled The Times and everyone else. In 1949 the Morgan Library held a dual celebration: its own 25th anniversary, and da Costa Greene’s retirement after her 43-year association and the transformation of the library into a public institution, starting in 1924. The Times then described as “her taste, her intelligence, her dynamism,” and the way she “transformed a rich man’s casually built collection into one which ranks with the greatest ion the world.” The library at 225 Madison Avenue is still open to the public as a museum and concert stage.

“We are very excited about having a book for Flagler Reads Together that gives us the opportunity to simultaneously celebrate Black History, Women’s History, and National Library Week,” Albanese said. “Please join us in the pages of ‘The Personal Librarian’ and in person for our programs.”

Flagler Reads Together never skipped a year, even during the Covid pandemic. The event was under way in 2020, celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the women’s right to vote, but it had to be suspended after March 17.

As in past years, the Friends of the Library sponsor associated programs throughout the reading timeframe, which in this case is nearly two months. These programs include the following:

• Author presentation – 2 p.m. March 2 at the Public Library Main Palm Coast Branch – Kim Medley, who is also a member of the American Association of University Women, will discuss her book “Suffrage, Women & Untold Stories” and share images she compiled during her research. She will also discuss the 1916 Seventh Day Adventist Church project, a venture with the American Association of University Women and the Flagler County Historical Society. Some members will dress in period costume.
• Movie matinee – 1 to 4 p.m. March 19 at the Public Library Main Palm Coast Branch – about the incredible story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson. These brilliant African American women worked for NASA and were the brains behind the launch into orbit of astronaut John Glenn. This visionary trio crossed racial and gender lines to turn around the Space Race.
• Book Club discussion – 2:45 to 4:30 p.m. March 23 at the Public Library Main Palm Coast Branch – of “The Personal Librarian.”
• Movie matinee – 1 to 4 p.m. April 1 at the Public Library Main Palm Coast Branch – that showcases America’s librarians, who have more cardholders than VISA, more customers than Amazon, and more restaurants than McDonald’s. It is a vivid blend of documentary, feature film, and storytelling that reveals the history and realities of librarianship in the appealing context of American movies.
• Movie matinee – 1 to 4 p.m. April 6 at the Public Library Main Palm Coast Branch – is a David versus Goliath story that tackles some of the nation’s most challenging issues: homelessness and mental illness.