Simon Harcourt Nowell-Smith (January 5, 1909 - March 28, 1996) was a British writer, collector and librarian. [1]
Nowell-Smith graduated from Sherborne School in 1928 where he edited The Shirburnian and New College, University of Oxford in 1932. [2]
He served on the editorial staff of The Times from 1932 to 1944 and was assistant editor, Times Literary Supplement, 1937 to 1939.
During World War II Nowell-Smith served in the Naval Intelligence Unit. [3]
He was Secretary and Librarian at the London Library from 1950 to 1956 and Secretary of the Hospital Library Services Survey 1958–1959.
He was President of the Bibliographical Society 1962–1964. [4]
In 1965–1966 he was the Lyell Lecturer in Bibliography at the University of Oxford where he spoke on "International Copyright Law and the Publisher in the Reign of Queen Victoria." [5]
He was a trustee of Dove Cottage from 1974 to 1982.
Nowell-Smith assembled collections of Henry James (now at McMaster University) and Robert Bridges (now at the University of South Carolina). The focus of the ‘Ewelme Collection’, named after the Oxford village where he lived, was 19th- and early 20th-century poetry. [6] [7]
Nowell-Smith was elected to the Roxburghe Club in 1979. [8]
A bibliographic essay in The Book Collector in 1989 described and documented Nowell-Smith's collecting and his writing, including pseudegrapha as "Michael Trevanian of Erewhon." [9]
Thomas Frognall Dibdin was an English bibliographer, born in Calcutta to Thomas Dibdin, the sailor brother of the composer Charles Dibdin.
Bibliophilia or bibliophilism is the love of books. A bibliophile or bookworm is an individual who loves and frequently reads or collects books.
Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes was a British surgeon and author. He began his career as a physician in World War I, before becoming a doctor at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where he made notable innovations in the fields of blood transfusion and breast cancer surgery. Keynes was also a publishing scholar and bibliographer of English literature and English medical history, focusing primarily on William Blake and William Harvey.
Alan Noel Latimer Munby was an English librarian, bibliographical scholar and book collector. He is also remembered as the author of a volume of ghost stories written in the tradition of M. R. James.
John Waynflete Carter was an English writer, diplomat, bibliographer, book-collector, antiquarian bookseller and president of the Bibliographical Society in 1968. He was recognized as one of the most important figures in the Anglo-American book world. He was the great-grandson of Canon T. T. Carter
Falconer Madan was Librarian of the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.
Wilberforce Eames was an American bibliographer and librarian, known as the 'Dean of American bibliographers'.
Howard Millar Nixon OBE was a British librarian and historian of bookbinding. He was a librarian at the British Museum then Librarian of Westminster Abbey from 1974 until his death.
George Joseph Gustave Masson, was an English-born educational writer with a French father and an English mother.
Strickland Gibson was an English librarian and bibliographer, who also served as Keeper of the Archives at the University of Oxford from 1927 to 1945.
Robert William Chapman, usually known in print as R. W. Chapman, was a British scholar, book collector and editor of the works of Samuel Johnson and Jane Austen.
Harry Graham Carter was an English typographer, translator and writer. He was a well-known historian of type. He was the father of type designer Matthew Carter.
Richard Broke Freeman was a zoologist, historian of zoology, bibliographer of natural history and book collector. Known professionally as R. B. Freeman, he compiled comprehensive reference works on Charles Darwin and on P. H. Gosse. He was “a meticulous scholar” and a “brilliant bibliographer” who showed “a genuine modesty about his great erudition.” "It is darkly rumored among antiquarian booksellers that R. B. Freeman once missed a completely unrecorded and absurdly rare 1859 second issue of the first edition of The Origin of Species", a reviewer wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, "but this is also said to be the only mistake he has made during a lifetime of persistent scholarship and imaginative detective work in libraries, bookshops, sale-rooms, the attics of country houses and the trunks of the great-aunts of great men."
Robert George Collier Proctor, often published as R. G. C. Proctor, was an English bibliographer, librarian, book collector, and expert on incunabula and early typography.
Alfred Forbes Johnson, MC was an English academic librarian, bibliographer, curator, and expert in typography. He was Deputy Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum. He is author of many bibliographical reference works, and the standard Encyclopaedia of Typefaces.
The Lyell Readership in Bibliography is an endowed annual lecture series given at the University of Oxford. Instituted in 1952 by a bequest from the solicitor, book collector and bibliographer, James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell. After Lyell's death, Keeper of the Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Richard William Hunt, writing of the Lyell bequest noted, "he was a self-taught bibliophile and scholar of extraordinary enthusiasm and discrimination, and one who deserves to be remembered not only by Oxford but by the whole bibliographical world."
Christopher Francis Rivers de Hamel is a British academic librarian and expert on mediaeval manuscripts. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and former Fellow Librarian of the Parker Library. His book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is the winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for 2016 and the Wolfson History Prize for 2017.
Nicolas John Barker is a British historian of printing and books. He was Head of Conservation at the British Library from 1976 to 1992.
David John McKitterick, is an English librarian and academic, who was Librarian and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
David Fairweather Foxon, FBA was an English bibliographer. Noted for his study of books and literature in 18th-century England, he was the Reader in Textual Criticism at the University of Oxford from 1968 to 1982.