Nichols sycophancy
Morgan’s Erotica collection
About Bella DaCosta Greene
Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) was one of the most influential librarians and rare book curators in American history. Born Belle Marion Greener in Washington, D.C., she was the daughter of Richard T. Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard College. As a young woman, she and her family began passing as white, and she adopted “da Costa Greene,” inventing a fictional Portuguese ancestry to explain her complexion. In 1905, at just 26, she was hired by J.P. Morgan to organize and build his personal library, and after his death in 1913 she continued as librarian for his son, Jack. In 1924, when the library became a public institution, she was named its first director, a post she held until retiring in 1948.
Over more than four decades, she assembled one of the world’s great collections of rare manuscripts, early printed books, and Renaissance art, working closely with dealers and scholars across Europe and developing a reputation as a shrewd, formidable negotiator at a time when the rare book trade was almost entirely male. She was known for her wit, glamour, and sharp intellect as much as her expertise — she famously said, “Just because I am a librarian doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.” She never publicly acknowledged her racial background, and she burned her personal journals and diaries before her death, so no direct record survives of her own thoughts on passing as white. Her true parentage remained largely unknown until 1999, when biographer Jean Strouse uncovered her birth certificate while researching a biography of J.P. Morgan.
Heidi Ardizzone’s An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege (W.W. Norton, 2007) is the only book-length biography — this is your core source.
The Morgan Library & Museum’s own biography page: Belle da Costa Greene ran the Morgan Library for forty-three years — nineteen as the private librarian of J. Pierpont Morgan and later his son, Jack, and twenty-four as the inaugural director of the Pierpont Morgan Library (themorgan.org/belle-greene) The Morgan Library & Museum The Morgan’s 2024 centennial exhibition page, “A Librarian’s Legacy” (themorgan.org/exhibitions/belle-da-costa-greene) The Morgan’s own “Additional Resources” bibliography page, which is probably your best single stop — it lists the book-length biography, a festschrift, and digitized institutional reports (themorgan.org/belle-greene/resources)