Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Nicholson, Edward Williams Byron
NICHOLSON, EDWARD WILLIAMS BYRON (1849–1912), scholar and librarian, the only son of Edward Nicholson, R.N., by his wife, Emily Hamilton Wall, was born 16 March 1849 at St. Helier, Jersey. He was educated at Llanrwst grammar school, at Liverpool College, and at Tonbridge School, from which he went as a classical scholar to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1867. He gained a first class in classical moderations (1869), a third class in law and history (1871), the Gaisford prize for Greek verse (1871), and the Hall-Houghton Junior Greek Testament prize (1872). After taking his degree Nicholson was for a short time a schoolmaster, but he gave up this work in 1873 when he was appointed librarian of the London Institution, a post which he held till 1882. In 1877 he was one of the founders of the first European conference of librarians, of which he acted as joint-secretary with Henry Richard Tedder; and in the same year he helped to organize the Library Association, of which also he was joint-secretary (1877–1878). He always retained a fatherly interest in the activities of the Association. When Henry Octavius Coxe [q.v.], Bodley's librarian, died in 1881, it was evident that the great Oxford library had reached a point in its development at which modern methods and requirements must be considered. A young man of energy and experience was needed, and Nicholson, then in his thirty-fourth year, possessed both. He was appointed (1882) partly through the influence of Benjamin Jowett, shortly to be vice-chancellor, and immediately set about a thorough reorganization of the library. He introduced a detailed scheme of shelf-classification and arrangement, reformed the method of cataloguing and provided an improved code of rules for cataloguers, organized a subject catalogue, increased the staff, and added in many smaller ways to the usefulness of the collections. At the same time he worked hard to improve the financial position of the library and to promote far-reaching schemes for its extension, including the provision of an underground storage room which was only completed after his death. The need of these may be judged from the fact that the contents of the library more than doubled in amount during Nicholson's term of office.
Nicholson's personal interests were of the most varied, ranging over biblical criticism, Celtic antiquities, comparative philology (under the influence of Friedrich Max Müller), folk-lore, music, palaeography, numismatics, athletics. He was a violent opponent of vivisection, and held somewhat extreme radical views. In his many activities, some of them revolutionary, it was inevitable that he should meet with strong opposition. He was not by nature conciliatory, and received little consideration from his opponents. Yet though vigorous and even obstinate in the pursuit of his aims, he was just, honourable, and magnanimous, while to the young and to any one in need of help he showed an unexpected sympathy. His many controversies, combined with incessant work, eventually told on his strength. His health began to fail in 1902, and for the next ten years he was more and more affected by heart trouble. He died in Oxford on 17 March 1912.
Nicholson's work lay, not altogether by his own choice, in administration rather than in scholarship, but the list of his literary productions shows that he did not neglect the latter. Besides numerous controversial fly-sheets, articles in periodicals and official papers, he published the following works: Sir John Mandeville, the English Herodotus (1873), The Christ-Child, and Other Poems (1877), Transactions … of the Conference of Librarians (1878), The Gospel according to the Hebrews (1879), The Rights of an Animal (1879), A New Commentary on the Historical Books of the New Testament, vol. i, The Gospel according to Matthew (1881), Our new New Testament (1881), Jim Lord, a Poem (1882), New Homeric Researches, (1882), Jehan de Mandeville (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1883), John of Burgundy, alias ‘Sir John Mandeville’ (1884), The Bodleian Library in 1882–1887 (1888), The Pedigree of ‘Jack’ (1892), The North-Pictish Inscriptions (1893–1895), The Vernacular Inscriptions of the Ancient Kingdom of Alban (1896), Golspie. Contributions to its Folklore (1897), Sequanian (1898), The Man with Two Souls, and Other Stories (1898), French and English, a play (1899), Keltic Researches (1904), ‘Vinisius to Nigra’ (1904), Can we not save Architecture in Oxford? (1910), Early Bodleian Music, vol. iii (1913). He also collaborated with Sir John Stainer in his works on early Bodleian music (1899, 1902).
Nicholson married in 1876 Helen Grant, second daughter of the Rev. Sir Charles Macgregor, third baronet, by whom he had three daughters.
[The Times, 18 March 1912; H. R. Tedder, E. W. B. Nicholson … In Memoriam (a paper read to the Library Association, 2 September 1913).]