"Our Tools of Learning" : George Arthur Plimpton's Gifts to Columbia University

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George Arthur Plimpton

George Arthur Plimpton was born at Walpole, Massachusetts on July 13, 1855, the son of Calvin Gay Plimpton and Priscilla Guild Lewis Plimpton. A member of the Class of 1873 of Phillips Exeter Academy, he entered Amherst College, graduating in 1876. After a year at Harvard Law School, he began as salesman in the educational publishing house of Ginn and Heath, becoming a member of the firm in 1882. In 1914 he became head of the firm, renamed Ginn and Company, was active in it until 1931, and remained a member until his death on July 1, 1936.

Describing his sixty years of collecting in the Preface to his first book, The Education of Shakespeare, Plimpton wrote: “It has been my privilege to get together the manuscripts and books which are more or less responsible for our present civilization, because they are the books from which the youth of many centuries have received their education.” The collection would come as a gift to Columbia in 1936. In the meantime he was very active in other matters.

A Trustee of Barnard College from its opening in 1889, Plimpton served as a member of its first finance committee and as its Treasurer from 1893 until his death in 1936. With David Eugene Smith, he founded the Friends of the Columbia University Libraries, serving as its Chairman from 1928 until his death. He was a member of the Grolier Club; the Academy of Political Science; and the Board of Trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy, Amherst College, the World Peace Union, founded by Edwin Ginn, the Church Peace Union, founded by Andrew Carnegie, the Constantinople College for Women, now part of Robert College, and Union Theological Seminary.

GEORGE ARTHUR PLIMPTON

“It has been my pleasure…”

[On Collecting]

Plimpton Papers

In this essay, Plimpton laid out his ideas in forming his library: “It has been my pleasure to get together the tools that have been used in educating people, being myself a publisher of school-books. When I began this collection I little realized what I was commencing. I started with a few early readers published in this country and now I have for instance some 3,000 books on penmanship, beginning with the [manuscripts] from which the old monks were taught to write on vellum, and coming down to the present day.”

Gift of George Arthur Plimpton

GEORGE ARTHUR PLIMPTON

“Fifty Years as a Publisher”

Autograph manuscript, ca. 1926

Plimpton Papers

In these notes on his publishing career, Plimpton remembers being introduced to Edwin Ginn by Amherst College Class of 1874 graduate, Melvil Dewey, in 1876, the year that Plimpton graduated from Amherst. Mr. Ginn had asked Plimpton “what I was going to do to earn money enough to see the Philadelphia [Centennial] Exposition and after that to go to Harvard Law School,” saying “I have just the opportunity for you. Sell my school books.” Plimpton found that in addition to knowing the books that he sold and those of his competitors, he needed “a general knowledge of the whole subject so that if necessary you could talk intelligently on the matter. This soon suggested my also knowing the history and hence started my collecting.”

Gift of George Arthur Plimpton

 

Rare Book & Manuscript Library / Butler Library, 6th Fl. East / 535 West 114th St. / New York, NY 10027 / (212) 854-5153 / rbml@libraries.cul.columia.edu