A lifelong Philadelphian, Robert Dechert achieved prominence both locally and nationally as a lawyer and a public servant. As a book collector, however, Dechert only began to gain recognition two decades after his death in 1975. He came to bibliophily relatively late in life and never devoted himself exclusively to the pursuit of rare books, yet what he lacked in time he made up in energy. Before he gave his collection of Americana to the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, it was one of the most important such collections in private hands. Begun by Dechert's mother-in-law, Helen Godey Wilson, the collection links two generations, forming a bridge between the world of nineteenth-century American book collecting and that of the late twentieth century.

Dechert was born in Philadelphia on 29 November 1895 to Henry Taylor Dechert and Virginia Louise Howard Dechert. The first American Dechert, Andrew Porter Dechert, had arrived in Philadelphia from...