Kemp Malone library
celebrates thirty years
Emory's Kemp Malone Library, the intellectual home of the English department, celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this year, but most of those who use it may know little about Malone himself. A 1907 graduate of Oxford College, Malone was, according to English professor James Morey, one of the most distinguished medievalists of the twentieth century.
 After receiving his bachelor's degree at Oxford, Malone earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and was a professor of philology at Johns Hopkins for more than thirty years. He also served as president of the Modern Language Association and may, according to Morey's reckoning, hold the record for the most publications on Old English subjects with more than five hundred, including a renowned Literary History of Hamlet .
A true academic and devoted University alumnus, at his twenty-fifth Emory reunion, Malone gave an alumni day address in which he forecast the challenges of the modern university, speaking of how hard it is to achieve "intellectual community" in the fragmented "city-university."
After Malone's death in 1971, his widow, Inez Malone, donated more than 20,000 books from his private collection to the University; many of these are in Special Collections, but some remain in the library that memorializes this prodigious Old English scholar.
Adapted from an essay in the English department newsletter Loose Canons by Professor James Morey |
