Walter Hart Blumenthal (1883–1969)

Walter Hart Blumenthal a scholar, writer and editor. Born in Clinton, Iowa, in 1883, Blumenthal moved with his family to Philadelphia as a young child and was educated at the Brown Preparatory School. Walter Blumenthal’s father, Hart Blumenthal, was a trustee of the Jewish Publication Society, chairman of the Keneseth Israel Free Library and a noted collector of Lincolniana. At the age of sixteen, Blumenthal was accepted into the freshman class of the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1903. Blumenthal first served as an editor at The New and Complete Universal Self-Pronouncing Encyclopedia which was released in 1905, before moving on to The National Encyclopedia of Reference and, in 1922, The American Hebrew, a weekly magazine based out of New York City. Throughout this time, Blumenthal wrote poetry, fiction and a number of scholarly essays. Blumenthal’s published writings reflect his many academic interests including book collecting, Judaism and history.