Louis Booker Wright (March 1, 1899 – December 26, 1984) was an American author, educator and librarian.
Wright was the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the author of numerous books about the American colonial period, and in 1928 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.
[1] Wright resided in Greenwood County, South Carolina, his birthplace, until he attended Wofford College, where he enlisted in the Student Army Training Corps.
He did not return directly to Wofford after the war, but spent several months as an airmail pilot before resuming his studies.
[2] In 1923, he became an English teaching assistant at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he wrote his Master's thesis in 1924.
[5] Before his appointment as director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1947, Wright was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by Princeton University.
While director, Wright used administrative insight gained at the Huntington to initiate more modern and efficient practices at the Folger, adding reference works and improving lighting in the main research room.
[8][9] Following retirement Wright published some other books, including Barefoot in Arcadia, a coming of age memoir about his developmental years in South Carolina.