William Cubbon (1865–1955) was brought up in a traditional rural Manx home amongst farmers and fishermen. He developed a love of Manx culture and heritage that would lead him from being a printer's apprentice at fifteen to becoming the Manx Museum's first Librarian and Secretary and then its second Director.

Cubbon was instrumental in the publication of many early Manx books, the founding of Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh (the Manx Language Society) and of the National Folk Museum at Cregneash with the acquisition of Harry Kelly's cottage. While museum Librarian at Manx Museum, his cataloguing work culminated in the publication of the seminal two-volume 'Bibliography of the Literature of the Isle of Man'.