James M. Wells

James Wells, a renowned rare book specialist and former curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Newberry Library, died on September 1, 2014. He earned an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in English at Columbia University. He taught English at West Virginia University for a year, and then held a fellowship before his academic career was interrupted by service in World War II in the navy reserve. Jim returned to Columbia after the war to study and teach before receiving a Fulbright Fellowship that took him to London to study for two years. His career at Chicago’s Newberry Library began as custodian of the Rare Book Room in 1963. The next year he became the library’s associate director. In 1975 he became vice president and in 1981 was named the George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. In more than thirty years with the Newberry, he gained a wide reputation as an authority on the history of printing, typography, and calligraphy. Jim was a longtime member of the Caxton Club of Chicago, founded by and for book lovers in 1895.