[This post was contributed by William Stoneman, Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library.]
John Ward and His Magnificent Collection, edited by Gordon Hollis and published earlier this year by Golden Legend, Inc., is described by Hollis as a second festschrift in honor of Ward, a full 25 years after a first festschrift and his retirement as William Powell Mason Professor of Music at Harvard University. Hollis argues that Ward deserves a second celebration of “his second career [which] continues the first and expands his work as a collector and curator of a vast and internationally important collection of original music and dance material for the Harvard University Libraries.” Hollis is joined in this admirable enterprise by a distinguished cast of musicologists, including Sir Curtis Price, Philip Gossett, Lowell Lindgren, Hugh Macdonald and D. W. Krummel, by antiquarian booksellers, including John and Jude Lubrano, Christel Wallbaum, Lisa Cox and Richard Macnutt, and by librarians Andrea Cawelti, Morris S. Levy and Virginia Danielson, among other friends and students. This volume makes fascinating reading for the insight it offers into the building of an international research collection of primary sources and for the hints it offers into the treasures it holds. The John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection in the Harvard Theatre Collection has grown to monumental stature and continues to grow almost daily. As the contributors assert, Ward is a force to reckon with.