More Prize Winners


"The Booker of Bookers"

In the Fall 1998 issue of the Newsletter we announced a gift of current use funds as well as an endowed fund to allow the library to collect the books that have won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize and subsequently other books and manuscripts by writers who have won the prize or who have been short-listed for it. Thomas J. Healey (C'64), together with the Healey Family Foundation, who provided those funds, has now established a parallel source of funding for the collection of National Book Award winners.

The Booker Prize collection, to which the library could contribute very little in terms of holdings already on hand, now numbers about 400 volumes, including first editions of all but one of the winning volumes. British and American first editions are supplemented in many cases by advance proof copies (including the very rare proof of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the book that was named "the Booker of Bookers" by three former chairmen of judges in connection with the prize's 25th anniversary in 1993). Paul Scott, the 1977 winner, is represented by a substantial collection of printed books and a number of letters.


National Book Award fiction winner, 1952

The National Book Awards, first presented in 1950, honor American works in fiction, poetry, and, at various times, a host of other fields and sub-fields. The initial goals of the collection will be to bring together first editions and advance proof copies of the fiction and poetry winners, supplemented by winning entries in other categories and, as occasion offers, manuscripts by award-winning authors; the library already has a small number of letters and manuscripts by John Cheever, Walker Percy, J. F. Powers, and John Updike, all winners in fiction. The ultimate goal of these paired collections is to create a research collection that supports work in what has been thought to be the best in recent English language literature.