Jacob Blanck

Jacob Nathaniel Blanck (November 10, 1906 – December 23, 1974) was an American bibliographer, editor, and children's writer. Born in Boston, he attended local schools and briefly ran a bookshop before being hired to assist on a bibliography of American first editions. He wrote for periodicals on the book trade and worked as a bibliographer in libraries including the Library of Congress in the 1940s and 1950s. Blanck also published two children's books. In the early 1940s, he founded a bibliography project that became Bibliography of American Literature, a selective bibliography of American literature. It was completed by 1992, after Blanck's death.

Early life and education Jacob Nathaniel Blanck was born on November 10, 1906, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Mildred Rosenberg (Friedman) and Selig Blanck. He attended Boston public schools, including the Commercial High School (possibly Boston's High School of Commerce (Boston)) but did not go to college. He started the Galleon Book Shop in Boston in 1929, which folded.

Career Blanck edited a rare book section in Publishers Weekly from 1936 to 1947, when it moved to the Antiquarian Bookman and was published there until 1952. Only writers of belles-lettres or literary fiction were included. The first volume was published in 1955. By 1970, Blanck had completed almost 13,000 entries on 173 authors.

Assessment Frederick M. Meek of the Massachusetts Historical Society pointed to his "hard work, incredible amount of knowledge, unusual memory and recall" combined with "a deep sensitive pride in what he did" which made him "the authority in his field – the field of American literature bibliography – culminating in BAL".

Publications Books Peter Parley to Penrod: A Bibliographical Description of the Best-Loved American Juvenile Books (1938) Jonathan and the Rainbow (1948) The King and the Noble Blacksmith (1950) Bibliography of American Literature (1955–91)

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