Louis Booker Wright, cultural historian of the English Renaissance and of colonial America, is not only a highly successful writer but also a builder of two major research centers. Wright was instrumental in developing the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Molding rare book collections into active research centers has been a vital part of Wright's intellectual life, and his writing must be seen as part of that activity. Scholarship, he has said, ought to have genuine utility: "Intellectual research, research that seeks fresh information and fresh interpretation, vitalizes instruction."

Wright was born 1 March 1899, in Greenwood County, South Carolina, eldest of three surviving children of Thomas Fleming and Lena Booker Wright. The family came from Scottish, English, and French Huguenot stock. In his boyhood, Wright hunted and fished in nearby McCormick County, the so-called "Dark Corner" of the state...