| Administrative History | Edgar Osborne was born at Moordown, Hampshire (a village which has now become part of Bournemouth) on 23 March 1890 to Albert and Louisa Osborne; his father worked for the Civil Service and was repsonsible for the mail between Christchurch and Poole. He was privately educated in Bournemouth, first at Richmond Park and then at St Paul's Church School. His grandmother, a teacher, had instilled in him a love of books at an early age and in 1903 he was appointed a junior assistant at the Bournemouth Public Library. He studied to pass the Library Association exams, and worked at Bournemouth for ten years, before moving to a post as a cataloguer at Sheffield.
In the First World War he joined the London Scottish Regiment and between 1915 and 1919 served in France, Salonica [Thessaloniki], Greece, Egypt, Palastine, Jordan and the desert, reaching the rank of Lance Corporal. Whilst on leave, he married Mabel Jacobsen (1887-1946) in Bournemouth in August 1918; Mabel was a Shakespearean actress, trained at the Leeds College of Dramatic Art.
After the war, he resumed his career in librarianship and on the suggestion of Colonel Mitchell (whom he met on active service) he became County Librarian of Derbyshire at the age of 33. This was at a time when county library services were just beginning to develop, and Osborne therefore built library provision across the county almost from the ground up. He was to hold this post for 31 years, during which he established the School Museum Service (later School Library Service), introduced mobile libraries and new branch libraries.
In his personal life, Osborne and Mabel were avid book collectors. Osborne's mother had an interest in early Victorian children's books and Mabel's family also had an extensive nursery collection. It was from these beginnings that what became the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books was built. Mabel died in 1946 and in 1949 Edgar gifted the couple's collection of over 2,000 volumes to the Toronto Public Library, where it has since been expanded to contain over 80,000 items.
In 1957 he married Kerstin Munck af Rosenschold, who was the City Librarian of Lund, Sweden. The couple divided their time between Lund and Derby. Edgar Osborne died in Derby in 1978. |
| Custodial History | After Edgar Osborne's death in 1978, his second wife returned to her native Sweden with his papers where they remained until 1999, when she donated them to the Record Office. |