By Jill Baker Assistant News Editor
volume version of “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby” by Charles Dickens was part of a book donation to Susquehanna this year.
Donated with it was an 1855 first-edition copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha” which includes an original letter Longfellow wrote five years earlier to a friend in Germany.
Danny Madden and Winifred Keller Madden, parents of a current first-year student, made the generous rare book donation after the family was impressed and wanted to show appreciation to Susquehanna after dropping their son off at school.
“Isn’t it great that the books are going to be dusted off and students are going to be putting on white gloves to experience these first editions?” Danny Madden said.
He added, “It’s exciting and animating for us to think that they are going to be put to good use.”
The first edition Nicholas Nickleby series is the only part of the donation currently on display.
It is featured for visitors in the Jane Conrad Apple Rare Books Room in the Blough-Weis Library.
According to a Susquehanna press release: “Danny Madden had been the custodian of the books after receiving them from the late Marion Hutner. Along with her husband, apparel businessman and book collector Bernie Hutner, the former Ziegfeld Follies girl had befriended Madden in New York City in the 1980s while he was a Fordham University student. He ultimately became the co-executor of Mrs. Hutner’s $20 million trust and estate, which under his supervision was disbursed to charities.”
Inside the glass case also stands the temporary donation of a three volume series of character sketches, “Sketches of Young Couples” printed in the 1840s, all of which were published anonymously.
Robert Sieczkiewicz, research librarian at Blough-Weis Library, said, “Nowhere does it say Charles Dickens [on the character sketches], at the time he was under contract with another publisher promising not to publish anything with a rival publisher. But [Dickens] could not say no to a job or gig for the extra money so these were published anonymously.”
The authorship of two of the three of the works was released after his death in 1870.
The Blough-Weis Library will be keeping up the Dickens display for at least the remainder of February 2017, because it is his birthday month. He would be 205 this year.
The display will be replaced soon after to avoid light exposure and fading of pages.
Both presented works have collectors’ slip cases to bind together the series, which have been opened specifically for display in the rare books room.
“I think what makes these so rare is that they are so fragile and that even though so many of these were being produced, he was simultaneously becoming a famous writer, so it is rare to have them preserved in the exact condition that they were first sold,” Sieczkiewicz said.
He added, “They have not been rebound and none of the covers are missing. It really enables students that really want to know what life was like in 1830s to be able to hold it in their hands and flip through the pages and see it in a way that they couldn’t with a fancy leather binding.”
Sieczkiewicz explained that these works would have probably been what could have been found monthly at a late 1830s newsstand and that Dickens knew many could not afford a leather bound book so he targeted the everyman to guarantee revenue each month and allow his work to reach a wider audience.
These works also match the newsstand style due to the noticeable amount of advertisements.
The room the collection is displayed in, the Jane Conrad Apple Rare Books Room, has been building a collection of rare books from alumni, community members and many others since Jane Conrad Apple’s initial bulk donation and gift that made the room possible.
She modeled the room after the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, inspired by her passion for the work of Shakespeare.
This room, the archives and the Pennsylvania Room of Susquehanna University are estimated to be holding 1,000 works of rare literature.
The Dickens and Longfellow works will be added alongside books dating back to 1500.
