Harry’s books
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “Cambridge at any time is full of ghosts.” Surely the spirit of Harry Elkins Widener lives on in the library erected in his honor. The son of a wealthy Philadelphia businessman, Widener graduated from Harvard in 1907. In April 1912, he and his parents were set to sail back from England, where Harry had traveled to purchase more books for this expanding collection. The family arranged passage aboard the RMS Titanic, the indestructible passenger liner that sank after striking an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland on April 15. Harry and his father died. His mother built the library in her son’s name. “She built this whole library for the entire University and put at the heart of it Harry’s collections and a hall to memorialize him,” said Rachel Howarth, co-acting librarian of Harvard’s Houghton Library, who curates the collection. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection — books,...