Mary Eccles, Viscountess Eccles

Mary Morley Eccles, Viscountess Eccles (; 8 July 1912 – 26 August 2003) was an American-British book collector and author. She was renowned for establishing one of the largest private collections of 18th century literature with her first husband, Donald Hyde. This includes works from Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. She also created an Oscar Wilde Collection which was bequeathed to the British Library in 2003. An obituary described her as 'one of the great American collectors of the last century, combining wealth, scholarship, and sensibility in a way that became rare to the point of extinction in her lifetime'.

Early life and education Eccles was born Mary Morley Crapo in Detroit, Michigan, in 1912, to American railway executive Stanford T. Crapo (grandson of Governor Henry H. Crapo) and wife Emma Caroline Morley. She attended Vassar College, where she became friends with novelist Mary McCarthy. She later attended Columbia University where she undertook an MA and PhD in English literature. The dissertation from her doctorate was later developed into a book, entitled Playwriting for Elizabethans.

Literary collections

In 1939 she married Donald Hyde, a New York City lawyer.

Art collections

While Lady Eccles private library was most likely her principal focus of interest she also, over a dedicated sixty years of collecting, assembled a collection of eighteenth-century British pictures. These included standouts like The Misses Garrick by Johann Zoffany and Captain John Stanley by Thomas Gainsborough.

Later years Mary Hyde married David Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles in 1984, becoming The Right Honourable The Viscountess Eccles. They founded the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library in 1992 as Lord Eccles had previously been its chairman. She was a member of The Roxburghe Club, an exclusive society of bibliophiles, from 1985 to 2003. She was also an elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1978).