Who was the Harvard student who famously was stunned to realize that he couldn't read all the books in Widener Library

100 +/- years ago, an undergraduate, later a celebrated man of letters, came to Harvard and was stunned to realize that he couldn't read all the books in the library. Do you know who this was?

I believe you are referring to Thomas Wolfe who was a graduate student at Harvard, receiving a master's degree in 1922. 

References:

Of time and the river; a legend of man's hunger in his youth, by Thomas Wolfe ...

New York, C. Scribner's sons, 1935. p. 150

 

Thomas Wolfe interviewed, 1929-1938 / edited by Aldo P. Magi and Richard Walser.

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c1985. p. 15

 

Turnbull, Andrew, 1921-

Thomas Wolfe.

New York, Scribner [1968, c1967], p. 53

 

Selected letters of Thomas Wolfe. Edited, with an introd. and explanatory text, by Elizabeth Nowell and selected by Daniel George.

London, Heinemann [1958], p. 44-45

[located by Joe Bourneuf c. 1990]

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