George Ticknor - Public domain portrait painting

A founding trustee of the Boston Public Library, George Ticknor (1791-1871) was a Harvard professor of Spanish and French and author of the monumental three-volume History of Spanish Literature (1849), his pioneering study of Spanish letters, history, and culture. During his lifetime, Ticknor assembled one of the finest collections of books and manuscripts dealing with Spanish and Portuguese literature from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Courtesy of Boston Public Library