Miranda Garno Rossa is a professor turned antiquarian bookseller and the co-founder of Marginalia Rare Books.
image from Edgar Fahs Smith Collection, University of Pennsylvania
by H. Meyer
Wellcome Library, London
Miranda Garno Rossa is a professor turned antiquarian bookseller with over twenty years’ experience in rare book history and manuscript studies. As the co-founder of Marginalia Rare Books, her appreciation for the intersections among femme, queer, BIPOC, and disabled communities informs her mission of placing these peoples’ early texts in special collections libraries where they can be centered and celebrated. As a collector, she specializes in the history of the British sex trade in the long eighteenth century, gathering scandalous memoirs, satires, portraits, and early erotic books that document its diverse community members’ life experiences outside the mainstream. Rossa’s work has appeared in publications including The Shakespearean International Yearbook and Studies in English Literature; and she has been an invited speaker for organizations including the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, the Rare Book and Manuscript Section of the ALA, and the Vanderbilt Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy.
Music featured in this episode included:
Haydn’s Sonata in B minor XVI:32 Mvmnts I & II performed by Amanda Setlik Wilson
JS Bach’s Suite 1 in G Prelude and Suite 3 in C Gigue performed by John Michel
Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor Op 34 No 2 performed by Nico de Napoli
Jane Marcet’s books available free on Project Gutenberg:
