Maury Austin Bromsen: Obituary
Maury Austin Bromsen, a historian, leading bibliographer, and antiquarian bookseller whose passion was acquiring materials relating to colonial Spanish America from the time of Columbus to the death of Simon Bolivar in 1830, died in his sleep Oct. 11 at his Back Bay residence. He was 86.
Mr. Bromsen amassed the "finest collection of manuscript and iconographic items" in the United States related to Bolivar, a leader in the struggle for South American independence, said Norman Fiering, director and librarian at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Mr. Bromsen donated his Bolivar collection to the library in 2000.
At the time, Mr. Bromsen told the Globe the collection was valued at "several million dollars" and included not only paintings of Bolivar but an 1825 document signed by him.
In the Globe interview, Mr. Bromsen revealed that Bolivar had been his hero since he was 13. He was drawn to Bolivar, he said, because, "I wanted a titanic, challenging subject, and the greatest figure of Latin America was Bolivar."
Mr. Bromsen was not just a seller of rare books, he was also a great lover and reader of them. And, he could read them in several languages. He was fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and conversant in French and German.
"Maury was a true scholar, the most brilliant man I ever met," said Jonathan Joseph of Los Angeles, a friend for more than 40 years. "He never forgot a thing. Everything he learned, he retained. You could almost hear the computer clicking in his mind. He read voraciously, but never fiction. 'Fact was more interesting,' he said."
Mr. Bromsen's knowledge of early printing in Spanish America, "especially in Peru, Chili, Venezuela, and Cuba, was encyclopedic and unsurpassed in the United States in the 20th Century," Fiering said. "Even more, he knew intimately the work of the great bibliographers of early Spanish American painting Medina, Garcia Icazbalceta, Rene-Moreno, Vargas Ugarte, Furlong, and others regarding these men as neglected heroes in the annals of scholarship whose labors are the precondition of all serious historical writing."
During Mr. Bromsen's more than 50 years as a dealer, some extremely valuable items passed through his hands. One of them was an excerpt from President Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech written in longhand on a plain piece of paper and signed by the president. The lines are: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Mr. Bromsen bought the sheet at auction in 1971 for $11,000, the Globe reported.
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A memorial program will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 20 in the Abbey Room of the McKim Building at Boston Public Library.
Mr. Bromsen amassed the "finest collection of manuscript and iconographic items" in the United States related to Bolivar, a leader in the struggle for South American independence, said Norman Fiering, director and librarian at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Mr. Bromsen donated his Bolivar collection to the library in 2000.
At the time, Mr. Bromsen told the Globe the collection was valued at "several million dollars" and included not only paintings of Bolivar but an 1825 document signed by him.
In the Globe interview, Mr. Bromsen revealed that Bolivar had been his hero since he was 13. He was drawn to Bolivar, he said, because, "I wanted a titanic, challenging subject, and the greatest figure of Latin America was Bolivar."
Mr. Bromsen was not just a seller of rare books, he was also a great lover and reader of them. And, he could read them in several languages. He was fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and conversant in French and German.
"Maury was a true scholar, the most brilliant man I ever met," said Jonathan Joseph of Los Angeles, a friend for more than 40 years. "He never forgot a thing. Everything he learned, he retained. You could almost hear the computer clicking in his mind. He read voraciously, but never fiction. 'Fact was more interesting,' he said."
Mr. Bromsen's knowledge of early printing in Spanish America, "especially in Peru, Chili, Venezuela, and Cuba, was encyclopedic and unsurpassed in the United States in the 20th Century," Fiering said. "Even more, he knew intimately the work of the great bibliographers of early Spanish American painting Medina, Garcia Icazbalceta, Rene-Moreno, Vargas Ugarte, Furlong, and others regarding these men as neglected heroes in the annals of scholarship whose labors are the precondition of all serious historical writing."
During Mr. Bromsen's more than 50 years as a dealer, some extremely valuable items passed through his hands. One of them was an excerpt from President Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech written in longhand on a plain piece of paper and signed by the president. The lines are: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Mr. Bromsen bought the sheet at auction in 1971 for $11,000, the Globe reported.
...
A memorial program will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 20 in the Abbey Room of the McKim Building at Boston Public Library.