He was a 1961 graduate of Yale College, majoring in art history. He later earned a PhD from King's College, Cambridge, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Edinburgh. In 1967, he was appointed inaugural Curator of the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection of the Beinecke Library at Yale, where until 2004 he helped develop one of the most significant collections in the world of early modern British literary and historical manuscripts. A resident of New Haven, Connecticut for nearly of all his adult life, for many years he also enjoyed writing as wine critic for the New Haven Register.
Steve was an avid collector, beginning as a child with stamps, and later turning to books, ceramics, and medals. As a graduate student in Cambridge, he began a life-long bibliophilic and decorative arts love affair with the English Gothic Revival. The Stephen R. Parks Collection of Augustus Welby Pugin and the Gothic Revival is now held by the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. Many objects from his decorative arts and furniture collection now reside in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.
He was also an active and energetic member of several societies and clubs, including the Athenaeum in London, the Century Association and the Grolier Club in New York, the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston, and the Johnsonians. In addition to being a lifelong member of Manuscript, a Yale senior society, and serving in leadership positions there, Steve was Librarian of the Elizabethan Club at Yale for 44 years, energetically developing its collection of rare books and manuscripts. He served for 35 years on the Club's Board of Incorporators, as its chair from 2009-2016, and was elected President of the Club (1994-1996). He was made an Honorary Trustee of the Yale Library Associates for his contributions to Yale's libraries and was awarded the inaugural Elizabethan Club Medal for Distinguished Service.
Steve had a special gift for friendship, one that he shared generously with generations of Yale students and colleagues for more than fifty years.
The full notice, including information about a memorial service to be held Friday, July 30 in New Haven, is here.
The Osborne Collection, which Steve curated, has amazing holdings in English history, ranging from 1280 to 1956, so anyone who ever did law-related archival work in the Beinecke related to this period has Steve to thank.
Steve was a central figure in my time at Yale (and after), uniquely bringing together the worlds of students, faculty, staff, visiting scholars, fascinating alums who passed through town, and even his own family, when his mother came to visit and then live in New Haven. There are generations of Yale students who shared a lovely meal or conversation with Steve in New Haven, New York, London, Cambridge, or Paris.
To know Steve was to be welcomed into a world of quick wit and fascinating ideas, objects, books, people. I will miss him very much.
image source: here
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