Joseph Green Cogswell in 1823 at Northampton with George Bancroft had established Round Hill, an experimental school remarkable in a number of ways, but which had been at various times beset by troubles including a revolt of students during which they had consigned their masters to a dungeon while they themselves went on a week-long spree at a Northampton hotel (Charlotte Everett to Edward Everett, 10 March 1830, MHi:Everett Papers).

Cogswell’s distinguished career, however, earlier and later was largely concerned with books. He, along with George Ticknor and Edward Everett, had studied at Göttingen in 1817. He traveled widely in Europe, met and corresponded with Goethe. When he returned to Harvard in 1820 to become librarian and professor of mineralogy and geology, he brought for the College library the Ebeling collection of 3,000 volumes and 11,000 maps and charts. It was in discouragement at the lack of interest there in the development of the library that he left to found Round Hill. Much later he was to become John Jacob Astor’s adviser in establishing for the public the Astor Library in New York City, its superintendent, and the compiler of its printed catalogs 1848–1861 ( DAB ; Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard , p. 266). His own book collection must have been a substantial one. The Columbian Centinel gave the sale notice in its news columns, an unusual procedure, recommending it to “the attention of scholars.... These books were selected by Mr. Cogswell when in Europe, and a large portion of them are works which can rarely be purchased in this country” (25 Feb., p. 2, col. 2).