This collection consists of the pre-1934 institutional archive of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library and the records of its founder, William Andrews Clark, Jr. Items include correspondence, invoices, photographs, secondary source materials and other documents related to Clark, his library, and his family, friends and colleagues.

William Andrews Clark, Jr. was born in Deer Lodge, Montana in 1877, the youngest son of copper baron William Andrews Clark, Sr. and his wife Katherine. Clark, Jr. (or WAC Jr.) was educated in France and in the New York area and graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelors Degree in Law in 1899. He returned to Butte, Montana, where he worked for several years as a partner in the law firm Clark & Roote and also served on the boards of several of his father's mining and industrial concerns. In 1902, he married Mabel Duffield Foster, who died of complications following the birth of their son, William Andrews Clark, III ("Tertius"), in 1903. In 1907, he married Alice McManus, a native Nevadan, and they moved their permanent home to Los Angeles in the early 1910s. Their house at Adams Boulevard and Cimarron Street occupied the grounds that the Clark Library still stands on today. In the mid-1910s, WAC Jr. began collecting antiquarian and fine press books as a serious hobby (he had dabbled in book buying previous to this). In 1919, he hired bibliographer Robert E. Cowan to consult on book-buying purchases and to help with the compilaton of a printed library catalog. The first volume of this was printed in 1920 by San Francisco printer John Henry Nash.

23.05 linear feet(43 boxes)

All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Clark Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.