Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Bulletin of Bibliography and Dramatic Index, Vol. 8: January, 1914, to October, 1915
Among the eminent men who laid the foundations, broad and deep, of the modern library movement in this country, Justin Winsor holds an exceptionally distinguished place. He was born in Boston, Jan. 2, 1831, and died in Cambridge, Oct. 22, 1897; he was deeply interested in books all his life; and the last thirty years of his life were intimately associated with library work. A man who served as the first President of the American Library Association, and who also served, in turn, as the chief executive officer of two such important libraries as the Boston Public Library and the Harvard University Library, could hardly have lacked some elements of distinction, in any case, but Mr. Winsor's personality was such that his distinction would inevitably be due less to the positions which he might hold, at one time or another, than to his own inherent qualities and characteristics.
As more than one student of Mr. Winsor's career has observed, there are few men of his time who have united in their own persons so exceptional an equip ment of scholarly tastes and accomplishments with so exceptional a capacity for administration. His natural endowments were well supplemented by his early training. Born in Boston, of an ancestry linked for successive generations with the history of the Plymouth Colony, he profited both by the thorough training of the Boston Latin School, and by that of Harvard College. After entering college, however, he was attracted, after a year or two, by a welcome opportunity of going rdirectly to Euro where he pursued his studies, at Paris and at Heidi? Berg. Although not graduating with his class, in 1853, Harvard University later granted him the degree of Bachelor of Arts, as of the class of 1853.
It is natural to conceive of Mr. Winsor, after all these years, as essentially a specialist in history. While this is true, he was a man of so wide interests that an attempt to label him too specifically would surely be misleading. It is well known that one of the unrealized aims of his life was the publication of a Life of Garrick, for which he had accumulated a large amount of material; and on such 'recondite subjects as the bibliography of the Shakespeare quartos and folios, few men on this side of the Atlantic were so completely at home.
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