Henry Festing Jones

Henry Festing Jones was an English writer, editor, and the friend and biographer of Samuel Butler. His Sicilian travel books include Diversions in Sicily and Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions, also catalogued in shortened form as Castellinaria. Both works draw on journeys, conversations, local customs, and observations of Sicilian places. Samuel Butler: a sketch offers a compact literary biography. The Samuel Butler Collection refers to The Samuel Butler Collection at St. John's College, Cambridge: A Catalogue and a Commentary, prepared with librarian A. T. Bartholomew. Cambridge records identify Jones as the donor who began assembling the college's Butler materials in 1917. The collection joined manuscripts, books, pictures, photographs, and personal effects, connecting his published scholarship with his long effort to preserve Butler's papers and reputation.