Alan Noel Latimer Munby

Alan Noel Latimer ('Tim') Munby (1913–1974) was an English author, writer and librarian.

Born in Hampstead, Munby was educated at Clifton College and King's College, Cambridge. He is best known for his slim volume of ghost stories, The Alabaster Hand, which includes three tales written in Oflag VII B, a German prisoner-of-war camp near Eichstadt, during World War Two. These stories - 'The Topley Place Sale', 'The Four Poster' and 'The White Sack' - featured in a prison-camp magazine, Touchstone, edited by Elliott Viney, which was produced on a printing press owned by Michael Rackl, who was the Bishop Of Eichstadt. The privileges extended to British Officers such as Munby contrast strongly with the treatment of those in concentration camps.

Munby worked in the antiquarian book trade with Bernard Quaritch, Limited (1935–37) and Sotheby & Company (1937–39, 1945–47). He became Librarian at King's College, Cambridge in 1947 and Fellow in 1948; he was J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography, University of Oxford (1962–63) and Sandars Reader in Bibliography, University of Cambridge (1969–70).^[1] He was elected President of the Bibliographical Society in 1974 and died during his term of office.^[2]

Munby's first marriage was to Joan Margaret Edelsten; his second marriage was to Sheila Rachel Crowther-Smith.^[3]

Reception

Boucher and McComas praised the stories in The Alabaster Hand as "quietly terrifying modernizations of the M.R. James tradition.".^[4]

Works

• (ed.) Letters to Leigh Hunt from his son Vincent (Cloanthus Press, 1934)
• (with Desmond Flower) English Poetical Autographs (Cassell, 1938)
• "Some Caricatures Of Book-Collectors - An Essay" ( printed for private circulation by William H. Robinson Ltd, Christmas 1948)
• The Alabaster Hand and other Ghost Stories (Dobson, 1949)
• Phillips Studies, 5 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1951–1960)
• Essays and Papers (ed. Nicolas Baker) (Scolar Press, 1978)

References

External links

• A. N. L. Munby at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• King's College Library: 'Tim' Munby short biography with images of materials from Munby's papers at King's College Cambridge Library