Richard Garnett (1835-1906)

English librarian and author. Born as a son of the Rev. Richard Garnett, philologist, priest vicar of Lichfield, and keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, on February 27, 1835 at Lichfield. Educated at home and at a private school. In 1851, just after his father’s death, the younger Richard Garnett became an assistant in the British Museum. In 1875 he was promoted superintendent of the Reading Room, in 1884 chief editor of the General Catalogue of Printed Books, and from 1890 until his retirement in 1899, just like his father, keeper of the Printed Books. He was given the degree of LL.D. at Edinburgh in 1883. His erudition was legendary at the Museum, but he was quite the opposite of a dry-as-dust scholar. For his human interest in books, he was acknowledged as an ideal librarian. He published several volumes of original and translated verse and various biographies of Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Milton. He also edited many literary works, one of which was Relics of Shelley (1862), consisting of previously unpublished poems by P. B. Shelley. One of his hobbies was the study of astrology. Under the pseudonym of A. G. Trent, he published an article on ‘The Soul and the Stars’ in 1880. Died on April 13, 1906. (H. N.)