Vander Poel, Halsted B., 1911-

Collector and archaeologist. Halsted Billings Vander Poel was born in New York City. He started collecting books and manuscripts about 1937, concentrating on nineteenth and twentieth century English and American authors. From 1958 he lived in Rome, where he amassed a research library and architectural historiography of archaeological investigations conducted around the Bay of Naples, with emphasis on Pompeii and Herculaneum. He bought from many Continental dealers as well as those in England and the United States. Vander Poel edited and contributed to four major works about Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the multi-volume Corpus Topographicum Pompeianum. He left this "Campian Collection" to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Other benefactions include the donation of his Charles Dickens collection to the University of Texas and his Boswell collection to the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University.