The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict

Belle establishes an emotional relationship with Bernard despite the rumors among the New York elite that Bernard is Jewish and thus an outsider.

and cements her reputation as a force to be reckoned with.īelle’s life changes dramatically when she meets Bernard Berenson, a married art historian in an open marriage with Mary, a teacher and writer. During a trip to Europe, Belle outwits seasoned dealers and collectors, a triumph that pleases J.P. Belle feels the strain of maintaining her white identity and navigating sexism as she establishes her professional reputation.

In addition, J.P., a known womanizer, implies that he would like her to become his lover. Belle’s successes are complicated by threats from Anne, J.P.’s daughter, who asks Belle about rumors about Belle’s racial identity. She dresses in bright feminine clothes to stand out in the crowd and realizes that flaunting rather than hiding her gender and unconventional olive-toned skin is the best way to avoid questions about her identity. In the present, Belle announces her arrival to the New York collecting scene when she outbids the white male crowd at an auction she attends as J.P.’s surrogate. From that moment, Belle became the focus of Genevieve’s ambitions to secure the family’s financial future-by passing them as white. When Richard discovered this lie, he abandoned the family. Once the family moved to New York, she listed the family as white to avoid ejection from their fine New York apartment. Genevieve never forgot the precariousness of that time. The family later left under threat of lynching when Reconstruction ended in the South and the school became segregated. Richard, the first Black man to graduate from Harvard, married Genevieve, the beautiful and ambitious daughter of the elite Fleet family of Washington, D.C., and moved his family to South Carolina so he could work as a philosophy professor at an integrated state university. Belle’s parents, Richard and Genevieve, had a promising start in life. In several flashbacks, the reader learns more about Belle’s history. She also learns at a party at the Vanderbilt mansion that women in this world are bold and use flirtation as social currency, an approach that runs counter to the modesty and invisibility Genevieve, Belle’s mother, has always advised. Belle quickly learns that being white will not allow her to overcome prejudices against women working in the male-dominated field of art and rare book collecting. and the elite New Yorkers she encounters do not know is that Belle is a Black woman passing as white.

Belle da Costa Greene, born Belle Marion Greener, is a Princeton-educated librarian who lands a high-profile job with steel magnate J.P.

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict