Alexander H. Turnbull was one of the trio of outstanding book collectors of New Zealand's colonial period; along with Sir George Grey and Thomas Hocken, he was preeminent above some twelve other substantial bibliophiles of the era. Unlike Grey or Hocken, Turnbull was not an active scholar, his only published work being the Account of a Cruise in the Yacht Iorangi to Queen Charlotte Sound (1902), privately printed and undistinguished in style. Nonetheless, he developed an impressive expertise in his special fields of interest, which he shared freely with friends and correspondents, and he accumulated the largest private library in the country. His achievement was the library itself, which comprised more than fifty-five thousand books by the time of his death. Through bequeathing it to the nation, he has put subsequent generations deeply in his debt.

Indulging in what he described in a letter of 28 May 1891 as "one of...