In a span of forty-six years, David A. Randall successfully engaged in two careers. From 1929 until 1955 he was a dealer in rare books in New York City, and from 1956 until his death in 1975 he was the head of a rare-book library, the Lilly Library at Indiana University. While the two careers are obviously related, moving from one to the other is not always easy, but David Randall had the talent and temperament to be able to make considerable contributions in both areas.

Dave Randall was born on 5 April 1905, in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, the son of David Virgil and Harriet Witt Randall. Randall attended Harrisburg Academy, and he was graduated cum laude from the school in 1924. He then entered Lehigh University in nearby Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in English in 1928 with an undergraduate thesis on Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur (1485). At Lehigh he was a member...