Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902) was an American bibliographer, editor, biographer, and novelist.

Paul Leicester Ford was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of a bibliophile whose superb collection of Americana was valued at $100,000. An injury to his spine hindered Paul's growth; he had to be educated by tutors. In time his omnivorous reading in his father's library (encouraged by a scholarly brother, Worthington), his life in a select social environment, and his extensive travels in North and South America and in Europe extended his cultural interests.

Ford's first publication, at the age of 11, The Webster Geneology (sic), accompanied by learned notes, was privately printed. He went on to publish several bibliographies--of books by and about Alexander Hamilton (1886) and Benjamin Franklin (1889), the Check-List of American Magazines Published in the Eighteenth Century (1889), and of literature relating to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution (1896). He reprinted in facsimile early...