Persuasions #2, 1980                                                                                                                                            Page 7

 

HENRY GERSHON BURKE

Henry Gershon Burke, B.C.S., L.L.B., Ph.D., of Baltimore, a Founder of JASNA and the guiding spirit behind the Baltimore Meeting. Mr Burke is well-known in the city for his many activities of a charitable, educational and cultural nature.

Mr. Burke’s wife, the late Alberta Burke, had one of the finest private J. A. collections in the world. The letters and mss. in her possession she bequeathed to the Morgan Library, New York. Her own library of more than one thousand volumes by and about J. A. – including the six novels translated into many languages – she left to Goucher College, Baltimore. Mrs. Burke once caused a furore at a meeting of The Jane Austen Society in Chawton: complaints were being made that “some American” had bought at auction a lock of J. A.’s hair. Mrs. Burke promptly stood up, declared herself, and presented the Society with her purchase.

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