Alan Noel Latimer Munby
Alan Noel Latimer ('Tim') Munby (25 December 1913 – 26 December 1974) was an English author, writer and librarian.
Biography
Born in Hampstead, Munby was educated at Clifton College and King's College, Cambridge. He is best known for his five-volume study of the eccentric nineteenth-century book collector Sir Thomas Phillipps, and for his slim volume of ghost stories, The Alabaster Hand, which includes three tales written in Oflag VII B, a German prisoner-of-war camp near Eichstadt, during World War Two. These stories — 'The Topley Place Sale', 'The Four Poster' and 'The White Sack' — featured in a prison-camp magazine, Touchstone, edited by Elliott Viney, which was produced on a printing press owned by the Bishop of Eichstadt, Michael Rackl.
Munby worked in the antiquarian book trade with Bernard Quaritch, Limited (1935–37) and Sotheby & Company (1937–39, 1945–47). He became Librarian at King's College, Cambridge in 1947 and Fellow in 1948; he was J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography, University of Oxford (1962–63) and Sandars Reader in Bibliography, University of Cambridge (1969–70).[1] He was elected President of the Bibliographical Society in 1974 and died during his term of office.[2]
Munby's first marriage was to Joan Margaret Edelsten; his second marriage was to Sheila Rachel Crowther-Smith.[3]
Reception
Boucher and McComas praised the stories in The Alabaster Hand as "quietly terrifying modernizations of the M.R. James tradition.".[4]
Works
- (ed.) Letters to Leigh Hunt from his son Vincent (Cloanthus Press, 1934)
- (with Desmond Flower) English Poetical Autographs (Cassell, 1938)
- "Some Caricatures Of Book-Collectors: An Essay" (printed for private circulation by William H. Robinson Ltd, Christmas 1948)
- The Alabaster Hand and other Ghost Stories (Dobson, 1949)
- Phillips Studies, 5 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1951–1960)
- The Cult of the Autograph Letter in England (London: Athlone Press, 1962)
- Connoisseurs and Medieval Miniatures 1750-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)
- Essays and Papers (ed. Nicolas Barker) (Scolar Press, 1977) ISBN 0-85967-349-9
See also
References
External links
- A. N. L. Munby at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- King's College Library: 'Tim' Munby short biography with images of materials from Munby's papers at King's College Cambridge Library
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