Oliver, William Albert, 1926-2005

William K. Oliver was a plantation owner who resided in the Montgomery, Ala. area.

William A. Oliver (1926-2005) attended Cornell University and held positions at the United States Geological Survey (1957-1993) and the National Museum of Natural History, Department of Paleobiology (1967-2005). His research interests included the study of Silurian and Devonian rugose corals.

"William A. Oliver, Jr."U.S. Geological Survey. Last modified January 28, 1999. http://geology.er.usgs.gov/paleo/woliver.shtml. "William A. Oliver, Jr." The Washington Post.October 16, 2005.

American scientist William A. Oliver, Jr. (1926-2005) was an avid collector and bibliographer of Victorian authors, particularly Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) and Charles Dickens (1812-1870).

Oliver grew up in Champaign, Illinois, where his father was a faculty member in the civil engineering department at the University of Illinois. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Oliver returned to the University of Illinois to earn a B.S. in 1948. He continued his education at Cornell University, earning an M.A. and Ph.D. in geology in 1950 and 1952, respectively. After spending several years as a professor at Brown University, he joined the United States Geological Survey and the Paleobiology Department at the Smithsonian Institute where he worked until his retirement in 1993. Oliver continued his research as a scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian. Oliver specialized in ancient coral reefs and published his work in many academic journals, was a member of a number of scientific professional associations, and served as an editor for the Journal of Paleontology .

In addition to a productive professional life, Oliver was an active bibliophile and bibliographer, acquiring an extensive collection of rare books and critical material related to the authors he collected. Documentation within the present collection suggests that Oliver's father first purchased collectible books for him during his childhood. Oliver's personal library of nearly 500 volumes, including many first editions, and accompanying research material, is now housed in the University of Delaware Library. Oliver's collecting focused on the works of Victorian novelists, particularly Thomas Love Peacock and Charles Dickens, as well as illustrated editions of Edward FitzGerald's (1809-1883) The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Richard Doddridge Blackmore's Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor . Oliver showed particular interest in Dickens's last and unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).

Oliver was a member of both the London and Philadelphia chapters of the Dickens Fellowship. He traveled both within the United States and to England to attend Fellowship meetings and other Dickens events. He also visited sites throughout England that appeared in or inspired Dickens's novels. As a known expert in Droodiana, Oliver was a resource to scholars in their research.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood was Charles Dickens's final novel, which was left unfinished when he died of a stroke in June 1870. Only the first three parts of the story had been published at the time of the author's death, and drafts for the next three numbers existed; however, Dickens left neither a clear indication of how the plot would proceed in numbers six through twelve, nor the resolution of the mystery. The three primary questions that arise from the plot's cliffhanger are: whether Edwin Drood is truly dead; whether Drood's uncle John Jasper murdered him; and which character masqueraded as Dick Datchery. In addition to the many articles and books published on the novel, the Dickens Fellowship of London organized a theatrical mock trial in 1914 to present the arguments for and against Jasper's guilt for a public audience; among the main attractions of the trial were authors George Bernard Shaw as the foreman of the jury and G.K. Chesterton as the judge. While widespread fascination has waned, there continue to be articles and books published about Dickens's unfinished novel and new theories presented about its ending.