History of Special Collections @ Colby

  • INTRO
    • Goals
    • Student Scholars Wanted
    • Acknowledgments
    • Contact Us
  • CHRONOLOGY & CONTEXT
    • What Happened (early on)
      • The First Library & Edward Hall
      • The “Rare Book” Section (early 1930s)
    • Our Chronology (1935-1975)
    • Some Context
  • THE PEOPLE
    • Curators
      • Carl Jefferson Weber (Curator 1940-1958)
      • Richard Cary (Curator 1958-1975)
    • Librarians
      • N Orwin Rush (Librarian 1936-1945)
      • Gilmore Warner (Librarian 1945-1947)
      • James Humphry III (Librarian 1947-1957)
      • John R McKenna (Librarian 1957-1964)
      • Kenneth P Blake, Jr (Librarian 1964-1973)
      • Eileen M Curran (Acting Librarian, 1973-1976)
    • Other Colby People
      • Ernest C Marriner ’13
      • Frederick A Pottle ’17
      • Carroll A Wilson ’40 LLD
      • Franklin Winslow Johnson (President 1929-1942)
      • Julius Seelye Bixler (President 1942-1960)
      • Robert Edward Lee Strider II (President 1960-1979)
    • The Colby Library Associates
    • Highlighted Donors
  • HIGHLIGHTED COLLECTIONS
    • Rare Book Collections
      • Early Books
      • Thomas Hardy
      • Book Arts
      • The Rubáiyát
    • Personal Libraries
      • Library of Edwin Arlington Robinson
      • Library of Thomas Sergeant Perry
      • Library of Harold Trowbridge Pulsifer
      • Library of James Augustine Healy
      • Library of Ben Ames Williams
    • Manuscript Collections
    • “A Recent Accession”: The Colby Library Quarterly

Frederick A Pottle ’17

Frederick Albert Pottle (1898-1987) was born in Center Lovell, Maine. As a student at Colby, he was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He served in France from 1917 to 1919 and began graduate work in English at Yale University in 1920. He received a master’s degree in 1921 and a PhD in 1925. His long career on teaching and scholarship at Yale, beginning in 1925, lasted well beyond his formal retirement in 1966.

F A Pottle - 1987
Frederick Pottle in 1987. His steadfast efforts to build the collections in the Treasure Room were highly respected by fellow CLA members and greatly appreciated by Curator Carl Weber.

Pottle was considered an eminent scholar of lawyer-diarist-biographer James Boswell. He served as chief editor, and then chairmen emeritus, of the Yale Boswell Papers, a project that published Boswell’s personal papers. He was also an active researcher of  Samuel Johnson, the subject of Boswell’s well-known biography published in 1791.

Pottle died in New Haven, Connecticut in 1987, age 89.

FREDERICK POTTLE AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Pottle served Colby College as a trustee, 1932-1959. Among other awards, he became the first recipient of the college’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, in 1977.He was a frequent contributor to the Colby Alumnus.

Pottle founded the Colby Library Associates in 1935 and served as CLA president until 1960. In 1951, he presented Special Collections with a copy of his highly-regarded 1950 publication on the London journal of James Boswell.

Pottle contributed numerous articles to the Colby Library Quarterly. His reflections on the first ten years of the CLA appeared in the June 1945 issue of the Colby Library Quarterly.

Additional works consulted:

Frederick A Pottle donor file. Colby College Special Collections.

Frederick A Pottle file. Colbiana Collection. Colby College Special Collections.

 

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