Although he left school at fourteen to work as an upholsterer and cabinet-maker, Walter White (1811 93) would spend forty years working in the library of the Royal Society. White was mostly self-taught, a voracious reader who also learnt German, French, and Latin, and a diligent attender at lectures and other events offering self-improvement. After a brief emigration to the United States, he returned to Britain in 1839, and was offered a post as 'attendant' in the Royal Society's library in 1844; this led to his cataloguing much of the collection, and in 1861 he was appointed Librarian. He...