Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Fortescue, George Knottesford
FORTESCUE, GEORGE KNOTTESFORD (1847–1912), librarian, the fourth son of Edward Bowes Knottesford Fortescue, provost of St. Ninian’s Cathedral, Perth, by his wife, Frances Anne, daughter of William Spooner, archdeacon of Coventry and rector of Elmdon, Warwickshire, was born at Alveston Manor, Warwickshire, 30 October 1847. After a short stay at St. Mary’s College, Harlow, an anglo-catholic school where his high spirits brought him into trouble, he went to sea in the merchant service and then in the royal navy. In 1870 he entered the department of printed books in the British Museum, on the nomination of Archbishop Tait, his mother's brother-in-law. Though not a student he had great abilities and a sailor’s quickness and versatility. He thus soon made his mark and became an expert on the French Revolution, from cataloguing the Museum collection of its pamphlets. In December 1884 he succeeded Richard Garnett [q. v.] as superintendent of the reading-room, and promptly began, mainly in his private time, to compile a subject-index of the modern books acquired since the titles of accessions were first printed (instead of transcribed) in 1880. He grasped at once the doctrine, which he continually preached, that headings must be chosen to fit books, not books classified under headings previously selected to cover the whole of human knowledge. His Subject-Index to the acquisitions of 1880–1885, published by the trustees in 1886, met the wants of readers, and its continuation in successive volumes to 1910 was his main achievement. It left him little energy for literary work, but he wrote the lives of eight of his ancestors for this Dictionary, besides a few articles and papers. In May 1899 he became keeper of printed books, and held this office (despite much ill-health) till his death on 26 October 1912, four days before he was due to retire. In 1908 he had edited a catalogue of the books and newspapers relating to the Civil War and the Commonwealth, collected by George Thomason [q.v.] and given to the Museum by George III, and became almost as much interested in these as in the French Revolution pamphlets. He was president of the Library Association (1901) and of the Bibliographical Society (1909-1910). In 1906 he received an honorary LL.D. from the university of Aberdeen. He married: first, in 1875 Ida, daughter of the Rev. William Blatch, incumbent of St. John’s (episcopal) church, Perth; and secondly, in 1899 Beatrice, widow of H. Webster Jones, M.D. He had no children.
[Henry Jenner, George Knottesford Fortescue: A Memory, reprinted from The Library, 1918; personal knowledge.]