Ernest Worman was the first scholar to experience what many of us have come to recognise as the ‘salt-mine’ of the Genizah. Already seven decades before the founding of the Genizah Research Unit (GRU), he toiled away in the depths of Cambridge University Library (CUL), documenting fragment after fragment that, for the most part, did not move the needle of history one way or the other. Many of his greatest successes were secondary, research performed on behalf of other scholars who needed a librarian’s assistance in their own career-defining projects. He died tragically young, but his history is still entangled with that of the GRU and CUL. That said, Worman himself may have preferred to be remembered for his activities outside of academia. He was a devout Christian, a talented musician, an avid boater, and a committed activist for the wellbeing of young men. This article documents his life spent in service to the Cambridge community and the legacy he left behind for modern Genizah scholars.

Read here: https://doi.org/10.17613/1e96d-tcw56

Cite this work: Posegay, Nick. 2024. “Ernest James Worman and the Victorian Genizah: A Salt-Miner’s Tale of Romance, Tax Evasion, and Sudden Death.” From the Battlefield of Books: Essays Celebrating 50 Years of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, eds. Nick Posegay, Magdalen M. Connolly, and Ben Outhwaite. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, 16. Leiden: Brill, 239–258, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004712331_017.