[1] He inherited a fortune from his merchant father and spent much of his life amassing a collection of art and literature unparalleled in value.

Lenox also generously donated to institutions like the Presbyterian Hospital and American Bible Society.

[2][3] His father was a wealthy merchant who was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, emigrated to America during the Revolutionary War, and settled in New York in 1783.

[4] Upon his father's death in 1839, Lenox inherited a fortune of over a million dollars and 30 acres of land between Fourth and Fifth Avenues.

For half a century, he devoted much of his time and talent to forming a library and gallery of paintings, unsurpassed in value by any other private collection in the New World.

In 1870 these, together with many rare manuscripts, marble busts and statues, mosaics, engravings, and curios, became the Lenox Library in New York City.

James Grant Wilson reports passing on several anonymous gifts from Lenox to needy scholars.

[10] Lenox occasionally reprinted limited editions, restricted to ten or twenty copies, of rare books, which he placed in some of the great public libraries and notable private collections, for example, that of John Carter Brown.

An early love, the only woman to whom he was romantically attached, refused him, and he remained unmarried following her death.

An eminent scholar, who was occupied for many weeks in consulting rare books not to be found elsewhere, failed to obtain access to Lenox's library.