Papers of Garrard Glenn, 1901-1951

Garrard Glenn was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on 17 August 1878. His parents were Helen Garrard and John Thomas Glenn, a veteran of the Civil War. Garrard received his B.A. in 1899 from the University of Georgia, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He then went to Columbia Law School, from which he received an LL.B. in 1903; while a student there he served on the editorial board of theColumbia Law Reviewwith John M. Woolsey, founder of the journal. Upon graduating, he worked five years for Davies, Stone, and Auerbach in New York. He then helped establish the firm of Shattuck and Glenn.

In 1913 Glenn began lecturing at Columbia, and continued there as a part-time associate professor until 1921. He had devised a course called Creditors' Rights that so impressed the Columbia faculty, they hired him to teach it. In early 1927, Glenn turned down an offer of a teaching position at the University of Virginia Law School, but in December he decided to accept. He was the James Monroe Professor of Law from 1929 until his death in 1949. Glenn, a well-loved and respected professor, taught Trusts, Equity, Corporations, Evidence, Creditors' Rights, Security and Insurance.

Garrard Glenn's prolific writing career began while he was a student and extended through the years of ill-health preceding his death. In 1910, he publishedSecret Liensand in 1915,Creditors' Rights, a major work in an area of the law which he helped bring into focus. World War I prompted him to writeThe Army and the Law, and in 1931 he publishedFraudulent Conveyances. After he began teaching, Glenn had more time for scholarship, and in the thirties and forties he wrote his most respected works.Glenn on Liquidationappeared in 1935, and the three-volume work,Glenn on Mortgages, was published in 1943. His first casebook,Cases on Creditors' Rightscame out in 1940, as did a revised edition ofFraudulent Conveyances, andCases on Equity, co-authored with Kenneth Redden, appeared in 1946. He served as editorial adviser forJurisprudence in Virginia and West Virginiaand theRestatement of the Law of Security. Glenn produced more than 40 major articles for law reviews across the country and covered topics from creditors' rights to Sir Thomas More, whom he felt should be the patron saint of his profession. While at the University, he served on the faculty committee of theVirginia Quarterly Reviewand was a faculty advisor to theVirginia Law Review.

In 1909 Glenn married Rosa Aubrey Wood, and they had two sons, Garrard W. and John Forsyth, both of whom received law degrees at the University of Virginia; the sons are often referred to as "Fox" and "Rab", respectively, in Glenn's correspondence. The Glenns lived at "Spring Hill" in Ivy, and Glenn did most of his writing in the library of his home. He enjoyed collecting rare books for his personal library, and often advised alumni and Frances Farmer about purchases of rare items for the Law Library.