A. N. L. Munby was a prolific and graceful writer, a brilliant bibliographer, and an accomplished scholar. In works ranging from a book of ghost stories to erudite writings on bibliographical matters and his five-volume masterpiece on the life and library of the nineteenth-century book collector Sir Thomas Phillipps he demonstrated depth of knowledge and a keen wit. There is a paucity of published material on Munby, but the few accounts that exist characterize him as a charming, kind, and learned man who contributed a great deal to the world's store of knowledge about books.

Alan Noel Latimer Munby was born in Hampstead on Christmas Day 1913 to Alan Edward Munby, an architect, and Ethel Annie Munby, née Greenhill; his only sibling was a younger sister. In 1927 he matriculated at School House at Clifton College, where Cecil Taylor, the house master and Percival Librarian (the school librarian...