Tinker, Chauncey Brewster, 1876-1963

Epithet: of Yale University

A full biographical statement is provided in the register for the Chauncey Brewster Tinker Papers (GEN MSS 354) .

Chauncey Brewster Tinker, teacher, scholar and collector. Tinker was a member of the Department of English at Yale University, the author of several books about James Boswell, and Keeper of Rare Books in the Rare Book Room at Sterling Memorial Library at Yale.

Chauncey Brewster Tinker (1876-1963), Yale Class of 1899, was a member of the Department of English at Yale University, the author of several books about James Boswell, and Keeper of Rare Books in the Rare Book Room at Sterling Memorial Library at Yale. Tinker inspired Frank Altschul to start what later became the Yale Library Associates. Many of the literary and historical manuscripts that Tinker acquired personally he gave to the Yale Library.

For additional information, see the numerous references to Chauncey Brewster Tinker in the index to The Yale University Library Gazette, and the memorial written at the time of his death and printed in the Gazette, Vol. 38, Number 1 (July 1963).

Chauncey Brewster Tinker was born on October 22, 1876 in Auburn, Maine, the son of Rev. Anson Phelps Tinker, Yale class of 1868, and Martha Jane White Tinker. After losing his mother at age three and his father at age twelve, he was raised by his stepmother in Denver, Colorado. She persuaded him to attend Yale, where he earned all of his academic degrees: B.A. in 1899, M.A. in 1901 and Ph.D. in 1902.

After teaching for one year at Bryn Mawr College, he joined the faculty at Yale. There, he taught in the English Department as one of the University's most popular and acclaimed professors, from 1903 until his retirement in 1945, leaving only to serve in the Red Cross and military intelligence during World War I. He also served as Senior Fellow of Davenport College, where he lived for many years, and was instrumental in establishing the Yale Library Associates, founded in 1930. In 1931, he was appointed the first Keeper of Rare Books in the Rare Book Room in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale.

During his lengthy career, Tinker published many works of his own scholarship, including several books on James Boswell. In 1925 he was the first to view a previously unknown collection of Boswell papers at Malahide Castle in Ireland. This collection was later acquired by Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham and subsequently came to Yale. Tinker was also one of the foremost collectors of his age in the field of English literature, and his collection is now at Yale.