B.J. Kirkpatrick

Brownlee Jean Kirkpatrick, librarian and bibliographer: born Grahamstown, South Africa 27 January 1919; Librarian, Royal Anthropological Institute 1948-76; MBE 1975; died Broadstairs, Kent 24 May 2007.

In 1947, B.J. Kirkpatrick was appointed Assistant Librarian at the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, becoming Librarian within a year when Mary Kinloch resigned. From the outset of her career, Kirkpatrick was determined to set the library on a proper footing and stood by her aim of reclassifying it properly, despite opposition from the old school who stood by the muddled arrangements of the past.

Before the appointment of Miss Kinloch, there had never been a trained librarian in charge of the library, which had grown steadily but haphazardly since 1843. It was therefore a huge job to institute a proper system, but Kirkpatrick's persistent application soon led to a well-organised anthropological library, with a proper acquisition system, a library especially for students and a librarian of the first quality.

She also organised the institute's valuable collection of photographs and started the Anthropological Index, which is now online, as well as being in charge of book reviews. Fellows of the institute today who still remember the library as it was then, at 21 Bedford Square, speak with enthusiasm and fondness of Kirkpatrick's impeccable professionalism and ability to find everything needed, as well as her delightful personality.

Born in South Africa to a family of Scottish extraction on in 1919, Brownlee Jean Kirkpatrick spent her youth in Sevenoaks, Kent. Her father was a doctor, and conversations at the breakfast table revolved around the political issues of the day, so she was trained from the earliest age to take a lively interest in the world around her and to think for herself. She evidently adored her family, and maintained close ties with her two brothers throughout her life. She once told me how the family stood out to watch the great fire at Crystal Palace in 1936, which could be seen all the way from their home.

During her childhood, Brownlee Kirkpatrick suffered from scarlet and rheumatic fever. Later, a bout of acute nephritis curtailed her early career in nursing, and she was obliged to live at home until she recovered. Afterwards, she trained as a librarian and following a period in the County Library at Oxford, joined the Royal Anthropological Institute.

She worked there as Librarian until 1976, when the whole of the library was transferred to the British Museum. That year, she was awarded the institute's Patron's Medal, the first time it had been awarded to anyone other than a Fellow. She then moved to Canberra to become Librarian at the Institute of Aboriginal Studies and once again transformed a muddled collection into a finely organised and efficient resource.

It had always been part of Kirkpatrick's plan to return to the Royal Anthropological Institute after her retirement and work as Honorary Archivist, and this she did with her accustomed brilliance. She integrated huge quantities of papers from the late W.B. Fagg, long-time Honorary Secretary of the Institute, into other records, organised, catalogued and indexed them all. She had the Victorian minute books rebound and all the papers stored in archival conditions.

Never in the least sentimental, Brownlee Kirkpatrick could be intuitive and humorous, and delighted in visits to the theatre and intelligent conversations over a glass of claret or sherry. She had the most phenomenal memory and decided opinions. Although she possessed a television set, she rarely turned it on and would only listen in to the wireless for particular programmes. She never allowed herself to be inundated by a flood of meaningless chatter, and kept her head clear and alert.

She was self-sufficient and independent, and for many years lived alone in the house in Portobello Road, west London, which she had bought herself in the 1940s. She was an intrepid traveller and set off for places of interest to her seemingly regardless of issues of comfort and convenience. She was in her late seventies and eighties when I knew her, and would set out for Albania, Romania and Estonia and have a marvellous time. She also made a point of travelling to France with her brother every other year to visit the place where her nephew had been killed in a motor accident and where, in the course of time, they had made great friends with the locals.

Despite some very distressing losses in the family, Brownlee bore all events with great fortitude. She herself had once spent several months entirely encased in a plaster cast after an injury to her back - she mentioned this to me in passing once, not to complain in any way. She was a regular member of the congregation at her local church and carried on working into her eighties.

Sarah Walpole

Beside her long professional association with the Royal Anthropological Association, Kirkpatrick had another career, practised in her spare time, as a bibliographer, indeed the bibliographer, of modern English writers, writes Nicolas Barker. The "Soho Bibliographies" series had been founded by Rupert Hart-Davis, publisher and editor, as the vehicle for such works, beginning with his old friend Allan Wade's Bibliography of the Writings of W.B. Yeats in 1951. This contained a full bibliographical description of all Yeats's separately printed works, with further entries for books to which he had contributed, translations, periodical contributions and critical writings, all in chronological order. The formula had a lasting success, and Wade's Yeats was followed by more bibliographies, similarly arranged, on Henry James, Rupert Brooke, A.E. Housman and others.

To this list Kirkpatrick contributed first A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf. This came out in 1957, reaching a second edition in 1967, and a third (with Stuart Clarke) in 1997. After this came A Bibliography of E.M. Forster in 1965, to which the subject contributed a foreword, an unusual feature of such works; this too went into two further editions in 1968 and 1985. Even before it came out she had already begun the Bibliography of Edmund Blunden, under Hart-Davis's genial eye in his firm's offices at 36 Soho Square. Here she had the run not only of his own collection of Blunden's works, but also of the author's, left there while he was teaching in Hong Kong.

She often spent her lunch hours working steadily through these at the large table in Hart-Davis's office. Once he came back from lunch with a friend to find Kirkpatrick still at work. As Hart-Davis showed his friend out I heard his voice booming up the stair-well, "That's a bibliographer. We have bibliographers the way other people have mice." This was grossly unfair; always neat and tidy in her work, Kirkpatrick had a nice sense of humour (which would have been tickled by what she must have heard as easily as I), but above all unending patience and determination in running down and accurately recording all the distinctive characteristics of the books she listed.

The Blunden bibliography took until 1979 to appear, with an introduction by Hart-Davis. Her last book, the Bibliography of Katherine Mansfield, came out in 1989.