R. B. Freeman

British bibliographer

Richard Broke Freeman (1 April 1915 – 1 September 1986) was a zoologist, historian of zoology, bibliographer of natural history and book collector.Known professionally as R.

B.Freeman, he compiled comprehensive reference works on Charles Darwin and on P.H.Gosse.He was “a meticulous scholar” and a “brilliant bibliographer” who showed “a genuine modesty about his great erudition.” "It is darkly rumored among antiquarian booksellers that R.

B.Freeman once missed a completely unrecorded and absurdly rare 1859 second issue of the first edition of The Origin of Species", a reviewer wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, "but this is also said to be the only mistake he has made during a lifetime of persistent scholarship and imaginative detective work in libraries, bookshops, sale-rooms, the attics of country houses and the trunks of the great-aunts of great men."