Largest Rare Book Collection ever Donated to Washington State University

With their gift of more than 15,000 rare books related to angling and outdoor sports, Joan and Vernon Gallup made a substantial contribution to the Washington State University Libraries’ department of Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections (MASC). Valued at $ 1.8 million, this is the largest single gift of rare books in the history of MASC. It puts the Washington State Library at the forefront of such collections nationally and internationally.

The Gallup Collection “will no doubt serve as the foundation for significant graduate work in humanities and related fields,” said Todd Butler, associate professor and vice chair of the Department of English. Assembled over decades from American and British dealers, the collection is three times the size of well known angling collections at Princeton University and the University of New Hampshire. It represents one of the largest of its kind ever donated to a public institution.

The collection includes such treasures as a complete set of 19 first editions of Henry Abbot’s privately printed birch books, Oswald Crawfurd’s personal, annotated copy of "The Compleatest Angling Booke," and a first edition (1653) of Izaak Walton’s "The Compleat Angler", which is, along with the Bible, “one of the most popular books ever published in English.”

Read more about the Gallup Collection

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