Alfred Henry Huth

Alfred Henry Huth (1850–1910) was an English bibliophile. From a banking family, he followed his father Henry Huth's interest in book collecting, and helped found The Bibliographical Society based in London.

Life

Born in London on 14 January 1850, he was second son of Henry Huth and Augusta, third daughter of Frederick Westenholz of Waldenstein Castle in Austria. When not quite 12, Huth was taken away, with an elder brother, from school at Carshalton, to travel in the Middle East under the care of Henry Thomas Buckle, the historian. The tour, which began on 20 October 1861, was broken off by the death of Buckle at Damascus on 29 May 1862. Huth's education was continued at Rugby School in 1864, and later at the University of Berlin.

In 1892, Huth took part in founding the Bibliographical Society, acting as its first treasurer and subsequently as president. During these years he lived at Bolney House, Ennismore Gardens, in Knightsbridge; and later moved to Fosbury Manor, near Hungerford.

Works Huth published:

The Marriage of Near Kin (1875, 2nd ed. 1887) The Life and Writings of Henry Thomas Buckle (1880, 2 vols.); it contained an attack on Buckle's fellow traveller, John Stuart Stuart-Glennie, who replied in print. The Miroure of Mans Saluacionne, an English fifteenth-century verse translation of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis (1888, editor), for the Roxburghe Club of which he was a member. A verse translation (1889) of Goethe's Faust, Part I, second edition in 1911. A True Relation of the Travels and Perilous Adventures of Mathew Dudgeon, Gentleman: wherein is truly set down the Manner of his Taking, the Long Time of his Slavery in Algiers, and Means of his Delivery. Written by Himself, and now for the first time printed (1894, anonymous), a mock-Jacobean romance. Catalogue of the Woodcuts and Engravings in the Huth Library, posthumous publication.

Other works included a pamphlet on the Employment of Women (1882), and a memoir of his father for the Dictionary of National Biography.

Family On 16 January 1872, Huth married his first cousin, Octavia, fourth and youngest daughter of Charles Frederick Huth, his father's eldest brother. His wife survived him, without issue.