Harry Elkins Widener was an American businessman and bibliophile.
Background
Harry Elkins Widener was born on January 3, 1885 in Philadelphia, Pa. , of a wealthy, cultivated family. He was a grandson of P. A. B. Widener and William Lukens Elkins. His father, George Dunton Widener, and his mother, Eleanore Elkins, fostered the boy's love of books.
Education
Having prepared for college at the DeLancey School, Philadelphia, and the Hill School at Pottstown, Pa. , he entered Harvard College, where he pored over Book Prices Current and learned the joy of collecting.
Career
Graduating in 1907, he decided to make collecting his life work. Cowper's The Task, a copy once owned by Thackeray, had the novelist's note: "A great point in a great man - a great love for his mother"; Widener's frequent reference to this sentiment bears on the close bond between him and his mother. One of his favorite books was the Countess of Pembroke's own copy of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1613). Stevenson's work made a great appeal to him; Treasure Island was always with him on his travels, and in 1912 he printed privately Stevenson's Memoirs of Himself. In 1913 Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, who started him on his career professionally, printed privately a catalogue of his Stevenson collection. Widener passed days in the auction room, rummaged through dusty alcoves of book shops and under book-laden tables, and spent happy evenings in conversation with Bernard Quaritch and Rosenbach. Yet he realized clearly that mere gathering of books leaves no permanent profit to mankind. He once told A. Edward Newton that he did not wish to be remembered merely as a collector of a few books, however fine, but in connection with a great library. With this aspiration, he went to London in March 1912, and spent much time with Quaritch and at Sotheby's. At the Huth sale he obtained Bacon's Essaies (1598), saying to Quaritch, "I think I'll take that little Bacon with me in my pocket, and if I am shipwrecked it will go with me". He then set his face homeward. In the early morning of April 15, 1912, he stood on the deck of the stricken Titanic while women pushed off in boats, his mother among them, and at 2:20 he went down with the ship.