John Ballinger and Adoption

Biography

1860-1933

Welsh Librarian

Ballinger was orphaned as a child and left school at 14. He got a job as an assistant in the Cardiff Public Library in 1875 and rose to be chief librarian by 1885. In 1908 he became the first head of the new National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. He wrote prolifically on librarianship and Welsh literature, was secretary of the Welsh Literature Society, editor of the Welsh Bibliographical Society, chairman of the University of Wales Press and president of the [UK] Library Association.

References

Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940. (London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1959) Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales, edited by Meic Stephens. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) Who's Who in Wales, edited by Arthur Mee. (Cardiff: Western Mail, 1921) Collins, W.J. Townsend. More Monmouthshire Writers: A Literary History and Anthology. Vol. 2. (Newport: R.H. Johns, 1948)