Life
Henry Bliss was born in New York City. The son of Henry H. Bliss and Evalina Matilda Davis. He became the deputy librarian of City College of the City University of New York, now known as the City College of New York, in 1891, where he worked until he retired in 1940. Interestingly, Bliss never obtained a degree of higher education yet he was extremely erudite and well learned. He was also a poet and published a collection of poems entitled Better Late Than Never (1937.) He was married in 1901 and had four children with his wife, Ellen deKoster, before she died in 1943. Bliss’ relationship with the American Library Association was strained at best. He resigned from the institution in 1933 saying that he had received “so dubious a welcome there” and was “treated like an outsider.” He rejoined however in 1937. Bliss was generally rather blunt and biting in his criticism of the work of other librarians, and after his wife’s death, and near the end of his life, Bliss became something of a recluse. Despite this, at Bliss’s death in 1955 “a generous and moving obituary tribute” was written for him by none other than S.R. Ranganathan. despite the fact that Bliss had criticized Ranganathan by saying that he took him, “Less seriously then some others do, including himself.”
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