Daniel Siegel ’57, proprietor of M& S Rare Books Inc., has donated three titles from his private collection to Brown University. The items include a first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a first English language edition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and John James Audubon’s The Quadrupeds of North America.

Each of the books includes details that add to their value and importance to scholars and researchers. The edition of Gatsby contains an inscription from the author to T.S. Eliot in which he writes “For T.S. Elliot [sic]/Greatest of Living Poets/ from his entheusiastic[sic]/worshipper/F. Scott Fitzgerald/Paris Oct./ 1925.” There are also notes in the margin, most probably from Eliot. The Wittgenstein features annotations and corrections in the text by the author himself. The Audubon, comprising some 155 color plates, is unusual in that it retains its original printed wrappers.

“Dan has done a wonderful thing for scholarship at Brown,” said Harriette Hemmasi, Joukowsky Family University Librarian. “We are indebted to him for giving so generously from his personal collection. Beyond their obvious historical and scholarly value, the little details in these books are a large part of what makes them so special. For instance, Fitzgerald was a notoriously bad speller as evidenced by the errors in his note to Eliot where he even misspells the author’s name. This helps to humanize authors in ways that are not immediately apparent in their written work, giving us a richer understanding of them as artists, thinkers, and individuals. I am confident that each of these works will contribute meaningfully to research and writing here on campus.”

“I was very pleased that five years after I gave to Brown the extant original manuscript of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Dan and Kathy Leab gave their fine collection of first editions of Orwell to Brown,” Mr. Siegel commented. “This sort of synergy is the plea and the wish of all donors, and I hope that my present gifts, representing three entirely different areas of book collecting, will have a similar affect in the next few years.”

A long-time supporter of the Library, Mr. Siegel contributed to the renovation of the John Hay Library in 1979, underwrote the publication of a guide to Special Collections at Brown in 1988, and donated the manuscript of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to the Library in 1992. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Library for over a decade, serving as the organization’s first chairman of the Acquisitions Committee. In addition to his philanthropic work on behalf of Brown, Mr. Siegel owns and operates Providence-based M&S Rare Books and M&S Press, which specializes in new annotated editions of important works in American thought and reform, chiefly from the 19th century, and also published a limited edition facsimile of the manuscript of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Since 1938, Friends of the Library members have been advocates for the Brown University Library. The Friends of the Library acquire rare books and manuscripts for Brown’s collection, support web-based programming, and sponsor symposiums and discussions that bring a diverse group of journalists, academics, scientists, artists, and specialists to campus.

For more information visit:http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/University_Library/friends/index.html.
Image: Daniel Siegel ’57