Sir George Grey, governor of South Australia, the Cape Colony, and twice governor and premier of New Zealand, gave away two libraries in his lifetime. He presented his first collection of medieval manuscripts, early printed books, scriptural works, philological and indigenous-language materials, natural history works, and numerous association copies to the South African Library in Cape Town in 1861. A second and similar collection was given to the citizens of Auckland in 1887 to form the basis of the new Auckland Free Public Library. Grey's public-minded generosity, unparalleled in the annals of nineteenth-century book collecting, establishes his right to be called "the Patron of the Antipodes."

Grey was born in Lisbon on 14 April 1812, eight days after his father, Lt. Col. George Grey of the Thirtieth Regiment, was killed at the storming of Badajoz. In March 1817 his mother, Elizabeth Anne, ne Vignoles, remarried Rev. Sir John Godfrey Thomas, vicar of Wartling...