Henry Lewis Bullen

Henry Lewis Bullen was born in 1857 in Ballarat, Australia to American-Scotch parentage. He left school at 14 to become a printers apprentice and began writing articles for trade publications. In 1875, he immigrated to the United States. He lived for ten years in Boston where he worked as a printer, later becoming the editor of Trade Review, a printers publication, and made frequent visits to New York City to study new printing technologies.

In 1891, Bullen moved to New York City to work as the advertising manager for Hamilton Manufacturing Company, a printers supplier, who later became part of The American Type Founders' Company (ATF), and remained there for the rest of his career. As advertising manager, he was responsible for producing type specimen books, machinery and material catalogs and pamphlets. He also successfully marketed the concept of "type families," offering further weights than roman and italic and introduced classic revivals of Garamond, Caslon, Cloister, and Bodoni. He was also a contributor to The Inland Printer.

At ATF, Bullen began expanding his personal collection that would become the foundation for the ATF Library in 1908 in Jersey City. The ATF Library was "to serve as a model of art and craftsmanship to students of typography...to memorialize or honor predecessors in our profession or printers now living...[and to] enhance the appreciation by the general public of printing as an art and influence." The ATF Library merged the collections of Theodore Low De Vinne, Typothethae of the City of New York and the Franklin Typographic Society along with numerous smaller collections. Bullen served as librarian and was responsible for over 16,000 documents at its peak. In 1923, he advertised help at the library while compiling the 1923 type specimen book, hiring Beatrice Warde as assistant librarian. He later retired that year, and traveled to Europe to acquire rare books for the library. After ATF declared bankruptcy in 1933, Bullen began talks with Columbia University to acquire the library as he felt that the library housed at the University would provide the greatest research value to the public. The ATF Library was moved to Columbia University in 1936 and opened to the public in 1939. The University officially purchased the collection in 1941.

Bullen also lectured on graphic arts, wrote about typography, and curated exhibitions on typography. In 1911, he helped to found the Printers Apprentices of New York, which became a part of the New York School of Printing. He was awarded the AIGA Medal in 1934.

Bullen died on April 27, 1938 in Elmhurst, Queens.