(17-10-2016, 06:35 AM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I see three questions:
- Why donate at all (rather than sell)? This wasn't part of the above question, but the answer from David (possible tax advantage) goes in that direction.
Perhaps, but it seems like even selling it for less than he paid for it would have outweighed the tax benefits.
Quote:- Why to Yale? I don't know the answer, but we have to keep in mind that Yale Univ. has several libraries, and the Beinecke is one of them, specifically dedicated to old books and manuscripts. As such, it is one of the biggest in the US. I don't know if that was already the case in the late 1960's, though. I do know that Kraus donated several books to the Beinecke in the course of time, but I don't know if he also donated to other libraries.
Do we know whether he donated these other books to the Beinecke before or after he donated the VMS?
Beinecke is certainly a major rare book library and a perfectly sensible choice, but it would be interesting to know why he chose the Beinecke over, say, the Library of Congress.
Actually, I just checked and it looks like he did in fact donate manuscripts to the Library of Congress the same year he gave the VMS to the Beinecke, according to his Wikipedia page: One area of particular interest for Kraus was books relating to Sir Francis Drake. He eventually wrote a biography of Drake, based on materials in his collection, a collection that he later donated to the Library of Congress.[26] Kraus also put together a collection of important manuscripts concerning colonial Spanish America, particularly Mexico, including a letter from Amerigo Vespucci. Kraus donated that collection to the Library of Congress in 1969.[27]
Quote:- Why split the material? Note that Kraus was a member of the Grolier Club, and this club is dedicated to book collection. He also had a lot of material related to ELV, such as handwritten originals of her books, her work on Chopin etc etc, and there was a complete set of catalogues of Voynich. In my opinion it made sense.
I suppose this does make sense if the Beinecke is primarily devoted to actual rare books while the Grolier Club collections seem to focus on documents pertaining to the book trade itself.
(17-10-2016, 04:25 AM)Diane wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Not sure when Brumbaugh first arrived at Yale, but he and the librarian worked well together and perhaps that had something to do with it. No-one in Europe wanted the MS.
I'd forgotten about Brumbaugh. It looks like he didn't start seriously researching the VMS until the 70's but had been interested in it since the 30's. It's interesting that two of the most famous students of the VMS were professors at the university where it wound up being stored.