Early life

He was the third son of Frederick Huth of Hanover

Hanover

Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

, who settled at Corunna

A Coruña

A Coruña or La Coruña is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. It is the second-largest city in the autonomous community and seventeenth overall in the country...

 in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. Frederick Huth left Spain during the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

, with his family under convoy of the British squadron, and landed in England in 1809. Here he became a naturalised British subject by act of parliament, and founded in London a banking firm. Henry Huth was born in London. At the age of thirteen he was sent to George Keylock Rusden's school at Leith Hill

Leith Hill

Leith Hill to the south west of Dorking, Surrey, England, reaches above sea level, the highest point on the Greensand Ridge, and is the second highest point in south-east England, after Walbury Hill near Hungerford, West Berkshire, high....

 in Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

. There, since his father had some idea of putting him in the Indian Civil Service, he learned, in addition to ordinary classics, Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani. In 1833 his father took him into his business.

The drudgery of work in his father's office proved distasteful and he was sent to travel. He first stayed for about two years at Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, occupied at intervals in a business firm: then at Magdeburg

Magdeburg

Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....

 for nearly a year. He then made a tour in France for about three months, and in the beginning of 1839 went to the United States, and, after traveling in the south for some time, entered a New York firm as a volunteer. His father, however, arranged that he should join a firm in Mexico in 1840. In 1843 he paid a visit to England, and after marrying in 1844, settled in Hamburg, but rejoined his father's firm in London in 1849.

Book collector

He settled in London and occupied himself in forming his library. He began to call daily on booksellers on his way back from the City of London, a habit which he continued up to the day of his death. He gave commissions at most of the important sales, such as the Utterson, Hawtrey

Edward Craven Hawtrey

Edward Craven Hawtrey was an English educationalist.He was born at Burnham in Norfolk, the son of the vicar of the parish. He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, and in 1814 was appointed assistant master at Eton under Dr John Keate...

, Gardner, Smith, Slade, Perkins, Tite, and made especially numerous purchases at the Daniel

George Daniel (writer)

-Life:Daniel was born 16 September 1789, descended from Paul Danieli, a Huguenot who settled in England in the seventeenth century. His father died when he was eight years old. After receiving an education at Thomas Hogg's boarding school in Paddington Green, he became clerk to a stockbroker in...

 and Corser

Thomas Corser

Thomas Corser was a British literary scholar and Church of England clergyman. He was the editor of Collectanea Anglo-Poetica.-Life:...

 sales. He confined himself to no particular subject, but bought anything of real interest provided that the book was perfect and in good condition. Imperfect books he called 'the lepers of a library.'

His varied collection was especially rich in voyages, Shakespearean and early English literature, and in early Spanish and German works. The Bibles, without being very numerous, included nearly every edition prized by collectors, and the manuscripts and prints were among the most beautiful of their kind. In 1863 he was elected a member of the Philobiblon Society, and in 1867 printed for presentation to the members a volume of Ancient Ballads and Broadsides from the unique original copies he had bought at the Daniel sale. He allowed Lilly, the bookseller, to reprint the book without the woodcuts.

In 1866 he was elected a member of the Roxburghe Club

Roxburghe Club

The Roxburghe Club was formed on 17 June 1812 by leading bibliophiles, at the time the library of the Duke of Roxburghe was auctioned. It took 45 days to sell the entire collection. The first edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Chrisopher Valdarfer of Venice in 1471, was sold to the...

, but never attended a meeting. He printed, in limited impressions of fifty copies, edited by W. Carew Hazlitt, the 'Narrative of the Journey of an Irish Gentleman through England in the year 1752,' in 1869; in 1870 Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, 1584–1700; in 1874 Prefaces, Dedications, and Epistles, selected from Early English Books, 1540-1701; and in 1875 Fugitive Tracts, 1493-1700, 2 vols. In 1861 he caused to be translated into Spanish the first chapter of the second volume of Henry Thomas Buckle

Henry Thomas Buckle

Henry Thomas Buckle was an English historian, author of an unfinished History of Civilization.- Biography :...

's History of Civilisation, for the author, who was one of his friends. About ten years before his death he commenced a catalogue of his library, but, finding that the time at his disposal was inadequate, he employed W.C. Hazlitt and F.S. Ellis to do most of the work, only revising the proofs himself. About half of the work was printed when he died suddenly on 10 December 1878. He was buried in the village churchyard of Bolney

Bolney

Bolney is a village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex district of West Sussex, England. It lies south of London, north of Brighton, and east northeast of the county town of Chichester, near the junction of the A23 road with the A272 road. The parish has a land area of 1479.41 hectares...

 in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

. The Catalogue was continued and published in 1880.http://www.archive.org/stream/huthlibrarycatal01huth#page/n7/mode/2up

For many years he was treasurer and president of the Royal Hospital for Incurables.

Family

He married the third daughter of Frederick Westenholz, of Waldenstein Castle in Austria, by whom he had three sons (one of them being the author and bibliophile Alfred Henry Huth) and three daughters.