Huntington library director helped expand literary, science holdings

Daniel Woodward, a former director of the library at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino who was instrumental in acquiring the papers of several prominent authors, along with rare books and manuscripts in the fields of history and science, has died. He was 76.

Woodward died of cancer Nov. 23 at his home in East Amwell, N.J., his son Jeffrey said.

As director of the Huntington library from 1972 to 1990, Woodward oversaw a collection that focuses on British and American history and literature as well as topics in science, technology and medicine.

The library’s holdings include about 700,000 books, more than half of them rare editions, and about 5 million manuscripts.

“Dan’s primary impact on the institution came in his collecting of modern literature and his interest in the history of science,” Alan Jutzi, chief curator of rare books at the Huntington, said this week.

Woodward was actively involved in bringing the papers of poet Wallace Stevens and of poet and short story writer Conrad Aiken to the library. He also helped bring the papers of British novelist Kingsley Amis to the collection.

Woodward led fundraising efforts that in 1987 allowed the Huntington to purchase a 12th century manuscript of the “Ambrosiaster,” an early Christian commentary on the New Testament.

“The Ambrosiaster is one of the most important medieval manuscripts to have been acquired by the Huntington in the past 50 years,” Mary Robertson, chief curator of manuscripts at the library, said this week.

During Woodward’s years as director, the library also added a 1690 first edition of “Two Treatises of Government” by British philosopher John Locke and a 1587 printer’s proof of “Chronicles of England” by historian Raphael Holinshed.

“Dan filled in the collection in a major way when it was still possible to afford some things,” Jutzi said.

Starting in the late 1970s, Woodward turned his attention to the Huntington’s “irregular holdings” of works on science and technology, Jutzi said. One of his contributions in that field came in 1980, when he helped the library acquire the papers of astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, a former trustee of the Huntington.

Woodward also oversaw the renovation of the library exhibition space in the late 1970s, when it went “from a dingy place to one that became much more exciting,” Jeffrey Woodward said. “Most scholars who go to the Huntington are there for the books,” he added.

Woodward was born Oct. 17, 1931, in Fort Worth. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a doctorate in English from Yale University. He also held a master of library science degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Before he joined the Huntington staff, he taught English at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., and later worked as a librarian there.

He kept up with university scholars, informally, once he moved to the Huntington. “My father met scholars from all over the world in the library’s lunch room,” Jeffrey Woodward said. “He brought many of them to our house for dinner.”

Woodward was a senior research associate and scholar at the Huntington from 1991 until 1996. During that time he edited several books on the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. When he retired, he relocated to New Jersey.

In addition to his son Jeffrey of Hopewell, N.J., Woodward is survived by his wife, Mary Jane; his son Peter of Potomac, Md.; and five grandchildren.

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mary.rourke@latimes.com