Lawrence Clark Powell
American librarian
Lawrence Clark Powell (September 3, 1906–March 14, 2001) was an American librarian, literary critic, bibliographer and author of more than 100 books. Powell "made a significant contribution to the literature of the library profession, but he also writes for the book-minded public. His interests are reflected in the subjects that recur throughout his writings; these are history and travel, especially concerning the American Southwest, rare books, libraries and librarianship, the book trade, and book collecting."
Biography
Powell was born September 3, 1906 in Washington, D.C. of Quaker parents, G. Harold and Gertrude (Clark) Powell. His father was a general manager of the Sunkist Cooperative, and the family spent Powell's early winters in Riverside.
Powell's family moved to South Pasadena, California when he was five years old, and there he attended public schools, graduating from South Pasadena High School.
He received a B.A. from Occidental College in 1928. According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, "During the Depression, he worked as a shipping clerk at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena and for Fowler Books in Los Angeles and local rare bookstores until Los Angeles City Librarian Althea Hester Warren, in Powell's words, 'plucked me out of Jake Zeitlin's bookshop and sent me off to Berkeley.' " Powell later returned to Los Angeles to work for Warren at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.
He earned a doctorate from the University of Burgundy in Dijon (Université de Bourgogne) in 1932 (having written his dissertation on Robinson Jeffers), and a Certificate of Librarianship from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937.
In 1938, Powell started working at University of California, Los Angeles in the acquisitions department of the library. He was University Librarian at the UCLA Library from 1944 to 1961, and head librarian of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library from 1944 until 1966.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15458096. VIAF identifies the subject as 5302683. The Library of Congress control number is n79064947. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 2001, 1928 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lawrence Clark Powell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.