Richard Garnett (writer)

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer Richard Garnett C.B.<ref name="NYHons">Template:Cite news</ref> (27 February 1835 – 13 April 1906) was a scholar, librarian, biographer, poet and astrologer. He was keeper of printed books at British Museum from 1890 to 1899.

Life

Garnett was educated at a school in Bloomsbury. He entered the British Museum in 1851 as an assistant librarian. Anthony Panizzi, a close friend of Garnett's father, invited the then 16-year-old Richard to work at the British Museum following his father's death.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He married Olivia Narney Singleton in 1863. They had six surviving children.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1875, he became superintendent of the Reading Room, in 1881, editor of the General Catalogue of Printed Books, and in 1890, succeeding George Bullen, he was Keeper of Printed Books until his retirement in 1899.

File:Richard Garnett Vanity Fair 11 April 1895.jpg

"Printed Books"
Garnett by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, April 1895

His literary works include numerous translations from the Greek, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; several books of verse; the book of short stories The Twilight of the Gods (1888, 16 stories; 12 stories added in the 1903 edition);<ref name="Stableford">Template:Cite book</ref> biographies of Thomas Carlyle, John Milton, William Blake, and others; The Age of Dryden (1895); Essays of an Ex-Librarian (1901);<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> a History of Italian Literature; English Literature: An Illustrated Record (with Edmund Gosse); and many articles for encyclopaedias, including the ninth and tenth editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica,<ref>Important Contributors to the Britannica, 9th and 10th Editions, 1902encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 11 October 2020</ref> and the Dictionary of National Biography.

He also discovered and edited some unpublished poems of Shelley (Relics of Shelley, 1862) and edited the republication of the newly discovered poetry collection Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire in 1898. His poem Where Corals Lie was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar as part of Sea Pictures and was first performed in 1899. Long interested in astrology, in 1880 he published a monograph on the subject, "The Soul and the Stars", in the University Magazine under the pseudonym "A. G. Trent"; ill health prevented him from writing more on the subject.<ref name="EB1911">{{#if: |

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  }}{{#ifeq:  ||}}</ref> He wrote a biography of William Johnson Fox, published 1910.

In 1901, Garnett was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:Grave of Richard Garnett (jnr) in Highgate Cemetery.jpg

Grave of Richard Garnett (writer) in Highgate Cemetery

He died on 13 April 1906 and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.

According to Joseph McCabe, Garnett "cherished a genuine and somewhat mystical belief in religion, which combined hostility to priestcraft and dogma with a modified belief in astrology".<ref name="McCabe">Template:Cite book</ref>

External links

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• Richard Garnett Literary File at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
• Richard Garnett Collection Finding Aid at the Harry Ransom Center, UT–Austin
• Richard Garnett (1835–1906), Writer and poet; Keeper of Printed Books, British Museum(National Portrait Gallery)
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