George Ticknor's response to his teaching demands at Harvard College and the needs presented to him when writing his History of Spanish Literature (1849) was to assemble a library of some four thousand books and manuscripts dealing with Spanish and Portuguese literature from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, one of the finest collections in this field assembled in his lifetime. Ticknor bequeathed his library to the Boston Public Library, which he helped establish and which his books did much to enrich.

Born 1 August 1791, the only son of Elisha and Elizabeth Billings Curtis Ticknor, George Ticknor was privileged to be part of a well-established and well-educated family. His father, a successful businessman, and his mother had both been teachers. Ticknor never attended school but was prepared by his father to enter Dartmouth College, where his father had attended. At Dartmouth Ticknor was a serious student of Latin and Greek...