A Bibliographic Puzzle: Goulding, Golding, or Bridges?

 

Henry J. Golding

Sometimes I find puzzling items that take a bit of searching to figure out.  One such item is an entry in the James F. Hornback's dissertation bibliography.  

GOULDING, HENRY J., ed., The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Movement. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1926.

Rather often, when I find a bibliographic entry in someone else's work, I try to track it down.  Sometimes a bibliographic entry doesn't include everything that the Chicago Manual of Style and I would like to see as part of the record, so I try find the missing piece.  Or I want to see whether the source is a primary source for Ethical Culture, a secondary source, or even has any relevance at all to this Bibliography.  Sometimes, I want to see if the source is available in a format that will be accessible to those who use the Bibliography.  The latter was the purpose of my attempt to track down this citation.  All the information is there in Hornback.  The title indicates its relevance.  I just needed to see if there might be an ebook out there for us all to look at.

No such luck.  I checked Google Books, Hathi Trust, Internet Library, and so on down the line.  I couldn't find much of anything by Henry J. Goulding.  Except, when I entered his name and the title exactly as Hornback had provided them, the search engine returned a single entry:  Hornback's dissertation.  I think we've been here before.  I think this is a typo.  

Horace J. Bridges (more on him soon) actually edited the Fiftieth Anniversary tribute to Felix Adler.  Henry J. Golding contributed an essay:  "The Spiritual Outlook on Life" (pp. 227-244).  I'm still looking for Henry J. Goulding.

On the other hand, serendipity occurred yet again when I went searching for Henry J. Golding.  Here's what Ladywell Live has to say about Golding:

Henry J. Golding (d.1931), writer and philosopher – Henry was a man of wide erudition who relinquished a successful business career in London to become an officer and lecturer of the English Ethical Society, before moving to the US to devote himself to the work of the Ethical Movement in America. Many of his articles appeared in the New York Times and he remained a popular speaker and lecturer, one observer generously noting in his delivery his ‘deep voice and virile figure’. Many of his moral insights often appear in more modern thought for the day aphorisms including Forbes Book of Quotations!  Often cited as H.J. Golding, he died in New York in 1931. Before departing for the US he lived at 16, Algiers road, Ladywell.

I expect there will more to learn about Golding, if not Goulding.