On 21 September 1924 the New York Herald Tribune began publishing a Sunday book review supplement which included a column called "Notes for Bibliophiles." Leonard Leopold Mackall, a collector and independent scholar living most of the time in Savannah, Georgia, edited and usually wrote the weekly column from the first issue of the supplement to 1937. He covered the news of the book world and also wrote substantial articles about literature and aspects of book history and design, drawing on wide knowledge and an up-to-date network of friends and acquaintances occupied with libraries, collecting, and the antiquarian trade.

Leonard L. Mackall was born in Baltimore on 29 January 1879. His father, Leonard Covington Mackall, was from Maryland, and his mother, Louisa Frederica Lawton Mackall, was from Georgia. They were socially well connected and had independent means. For a while the family lived in Philadelphia, but after her husband's death in 1890 Louisa moved to...