George A. Poole III, born in Chicago in 1907, attended the University of Chicago and graduated from Yale in 1930. He directed Poole Brothers, one of Chicago's three most important printing companies. Poole Brothers, originally a printer of transportation tickets and maps, came in these years to print Advertising Age, the New England Journal of Medicine, and many school texts.

Poole served on the boards of trustees of the Newberry Library and the University of Chicago. His special interest was in fine printing, rare books, and library research collections. His own collection of rare manuscripts dating from the third to the sixteenth century was among the most notable of the mid-twentieth century. It is today at the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Among the collection's highlights is a stellar example of Carolingian script of which Poole often spoke in his later years. He also had a lifelong interest in the education of African Americans, notably in the South, where his mother's family had its origins. He was a trustee of and generous donor to Saint Augustine's College in North Carolina until his death in 1990.

Paul Saenger