Flora V. Livingston Explained

Flora Virginia Milner Livingston
Birth Name:	Flora Virginia Milner
Birth Date:	month=11 day=25, year=1862
Occupation:	librarian

Flora V. Livingston (1862-1949) was an American librarian and bibliographer.

Early life

Flora Virginia Milner was born in Montana in 1862. She married the horticulturalist, bibliographer, and librarian Luther S. Livingston in 1898.^[1]

Professional career

Livingston's husband had been appointed first librarian of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection at Harvard University but he died in 1914 before having been able to take up the position. The following year, George Parker Winship was appointed librarian and Livingston became his assistant. In 1926 she became its curator, a position she held until 1947.^[2]

Livingston contributed to the uncovering of Thomas J. Wise's forgeries by John Carter and Graham Pollard.^[3]

Her bibliographic studies included Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Frederick Locker-Lampson.^[4] After compiling a bibliography of Rudyard Kipling, Livingston bequeathed her Kipling collection to her great-nephew Paul Montgomery, whose wife Helen Jenkins in turn bequeathed it to the University of Missouri in 2013.^[5]

Selected publications

• W. F. Prideaux, A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, new edition by Flora Livingston (Hollings, 1917)
• Swinburne's Proof Sheets and American First Editions (Cosmos, 1920)
• Bibliography of the Works of Rudyard Kipling (E.H. Wells, 1927; supplement, Harvard University Press, 1938)
• The Harcourt Amory Collection of Lewis Carroll in the Harvard College Library (Harvard University Press, 1932)
• Editor, Charles Dickens's Letters to Charles Lever (Harvard University Press, 1933)

A fuller bibliography has been compiled by August A. Imholtz.^[6]

External links

• Imholtz, August A., Jr. 2000. 'Flora V. Livingston: Curator of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, bibliographer, and Lewis Carroll enthusiast', Harvard Library Bulletin new series, 9(4), Winter 1998, pages 56-75.

Notes and References

1. George Parker Winship, 'Luther S. Livingston: a biographical sketch', The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 8(3) 109-142, page 112.
2. Bonnie B. Salt, Flora Virginia Milner Livingston research papers, 1927-1931: guide, Harvard Library, 2008-2009.
3. Joseph Hone, The Book Forger: the True Story of a Literary Crime That Fooled the World (Chatto & Windus, 2024), pages 175-176.
4. Imholtz, page 59.
5. University of Missouri, Helen Montgomery Jenkins Collection
6. Imholtz, 'Flora V. Livingston' (2000), Appendix C: Select Bibliography of Flora V. Livingston, pages 74-75.