LITTLE, ANDREW GEORGE

British historian; b. Manchester, Oct. 10, 1863; d. Sevenoaks, Oct. 22, 1945. Lecturer and professor of history at Cardiff (1892–1901) and reader in paleography at Manchester (1904–28), he was the founder and general editor of the British Society of Franciscan Studies. Between 1907 and its dissolution in 1937 the society published 22 volumes, the last being Franciscan History and Legend in English Franciscan Art, which Little edited. His chief works were The Grey Friars at Oxford (Oxford 1892); Initia operum latinorum (Manchester 1904), a collection of 6,000 incipit of medieval manuscripts; Studies in English Franciscan History (Manchester 1917); and Oxford Theology and Theologians 1282–1302 (Oxford 1934, with F. Pelster). He also edited thomas of eccleston's Tractatus de adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam (2d ed. Manchester 1951); the Liber exemplorum, a medieval Franciscan manual for preachers; part of john peckham's Tractatus de paupertate; and some hitherto unknown Leonine material concerning St. francis that he himself discovered (in Collectanea Franciscana 1). Most of the histories of the English friaries in the Victoria County Histories were by him, and he contributed to the Cambridge Medieval History, v. 6; the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum; and Proceedings of the British Academy; the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society; and the English Historical Review, for which, between 1889 and 1945, he wrote 50 articles. His more important essays were republished in his last book, Franciscan Papers, Lists and Documents (Manchester 1943). Little was a witty and brilliant teacher and inspired many books besides his own. His kindliness, unselfishness, and generosity won him many friends among his colleagues and pupils and among foreign scholars such as Paul sabatier and the Franciscans of quaracchi.

Bibliography: Annual Register n.s. (Toronto 1945) 428–429. f. m. powicke, A. G. Little, 1863–1945 (London 1947).

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