ICELANDIC VOLUMES GIVEN TO WIDENER

Making the Icelandic section of the Harvard College Library one of the best and most complete outside of Scandinavia, a large collection of Icelandic books was presented to the University yesterday by Mrs. Henry Schofield of Peterborough, New Hampshire, in memory of her husband, who was Professor and Chairman of Comparative Literature at Harvard from 1906 until his death in 1920. The presentation was made on his birthday.

On Faculty Since 1897

Sixty-one years ago yesterday, on April 6, 1870, Professor Schofield was born in Brockville, Ontario. He received his A.B. from Victoria College, University of Toronto in 1889, his A.M. from Harvard in 1893, and his Ph.D. in 1925. From 1895 to 1897 he studied abroad at Paris, Oslo, and Copenhagen, then served at Harvard as Instructor in English from 1897 to 1902 and as Assistant Professor of English from 1902 to 1906, when he was elected to the chair of Comparative Literature.

The collection, which is to bear Professor Schofield's name, was the largest private library in Iceland, and was purchased directly from its former owner, Kristjan Kristjansson, a merchant of Reykjavik, who had spent many years gathering it. It contains works both of medieval and of modern literature but is particularly rich in the modern field. Most of the older books are in the original bindings; there are a large number of rarities and some unique items. Together with the Maurer Collection, given to the University in 1904 by the late Professor A. C. Coolidge, it gives Harvard one of the best and most complete collections of Icelandic books outside of Scandinavia.

Professor Schofield was President of the American-Scandinavian Foundation and editor-in-chief of Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. In 1907-08 he was Harvard Exchange Professor at the University of Berlin.