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Jacob Nathaniel Blanck (November 10, 1906December 23, 1974) was an American Bibliography, editor, and children's writer. Born in Boston, he attended local schools and briefly ran a bookshop before being hired to assist on a bibliography of American first editions. He wrote for periodicals on the book trade and worked as a bibliographer in libraries including the Library of Congress in the 1940s and 1950s. Blanck also published two children's books. In the early 1940s, he founded a bibliography project that became Bibliography of American Literature, a selective bibliography of American literature. It was completed by 1992, after Blanck's death.
Merle Johnson, a bibliographer and rare book expert, hired Blanck to help him revise American First Editions, a second edition of which was released in 1932. In 1936 and 1942, Blanck published revised editions of American First Editions.
In the early 1940s, Blanck suggested to the Bibliographical Society of America that it sponsor a bibliography of American literature. In his view, the two existing general bibliographies of American books— American Authors 1795–1895 (1897) by P. K. Foley, and Merle Johnson's American First Editions—were not well suited for literary study, because they were either outdated or focused primarily on book collecting as opposed to scholarly research. The Lilly Endowment provided funding and Carroll A. Wilson, a book collector, was named chair of the project. Formally begun on January 1, 1944, it became Bibliography of American Literature, a study of all first editions by 300 American authors selected for their literary importance. (1976). 9780838902059, American Library Association. ISBN 9780838902059 Only writers of belles-lettres or literary fiction were included. The first volume was published in 1955. By 1970, Blanck had completed almost 13,000 entries on 173 authors. The project was finished in 1992, after Blanck's death. In a 2002 guide, critic James L. Harner describes Bibliography of American Literature as "one of the monumental bibliographies of the twentieth century".
He wrote two children's books: Jonathan and the Rainbow (1948), about a boy who saves a rainbow after it is taken by a pirate; and The King and the Noble Blacksmith (1950), about a child king who is helped by the titular blacksmith.
He died on December 23, 1974, at Faulkner Hospital (now Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital) in Boston.
A sign of the high respect in which bibliographers hold Blanck is the National Library of Australia's review on Chester W. Topp's Victorian Yellowbacks and Paperbacks, 1849-1905 in which Blanck is praised as follows: "a unique and major accomplishment in bibliographic studies in the tradition of Jacob Blanck, Michael Sadleir, Joseph Sabin and others". Victorian yellowbacks & paperbacks, 1849-1905 / by Chester W. Topp, nla.gov.au. Retrieved 6 January 2022.
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