We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.
  • Multi-Media Collection

My Forty Years as a Book Collector, Andreas Brown, 1990

Digital Item
Lisa System Manager
This item is active and ready to use
BROWNANDREASTRANS
My Forty Years as a Book Collector, Andreas Brown, 1990
1990-01-20
Enter a free text date.
Andreas Brown owned and operated the legendary Gotham Book Mart in New York City from 1967 till the shop's closing in 2007. During its lifetime, The Gotham was frequently considered the most important independent bookstore in America. Mr. Brown is still recognized across the country by book dealers, authors, and libraries as having been one of the foremost booksellers and literary estate consultants in the field of American literature. He had a close relationship with some of the world's leading writers, from Nobel Prize winners Saul Bellow and Samuel Beckett to contemporary writers such as John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Allen Ginsberg, J.D. Salinger, and Edward Gorey; as well as playwrights Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and Lanford Wilson.

Mr. Brown graduated with honors from San Diego State University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. While at the university, he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and Pi Kappa Delta, the national honorary speech fraternity. After graduate studies at Stanford University, and serving in the United States Army, Mr. Brown returned to San Diego State to teach speech for three years. He earned an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from San Diego State University in 2005.

In this talk given to the Friends of the SDSU Library in 1990, Andreas Brown discusses his childhood bibliophilia, and the history of the Gotham Book Mart, particularly its legendary founder Frances Steloff. In part 2, Brown answers assorted questions from the audience, including what he studied at San Diego State and his experiences with famous customer Jackie Onassis. (Introduction given by Chuck Valverde, then owner of Wahrenbrock's Book House.)

Andreas Brown; Chuck Valverde; Ruth Brown; Friends of the Malcolm A. Love Library; Gotham Book Mart; Frances Steloff; Book collecting; Book collectors; Joe Hurwitz; Wahrenbrook's Glen Dawson; Jake Zeitlan's; John Howell Books; San Diego State College faculty; John Ackley; University of Texas Humanities Research Center; Donald Gallup; Yale University Library; Book appraisers; Bancroft Library; Harvard Library; George Gershwin; Ira Gershwin; David Moss; Rudolph Valentino; Natasha Rambova; H. L. Mencken; Theodore Dreiser; James Joyce; T. S. Eliot; Ezra Pound; Henry Miller D. H. Lawrence; Censorship; Great Depression; Gertrude Stein; Alice B. Toklas; Marianne Moore; Leon Edel; Edmund Wilson; Edith Sitwell; Igor Stravinsky; Vera Stravinsky; Jean Cocteau; Charles Chaplin; Georgia O'Keefe; Frieda Lawrence; Marlene Dietrich; Noel Coward; Wise Men Fish Here (book); Saul Bellow; Tennessee Williams; Harry Huntt Ransom; Gernsheim Collection; Jacqueline Onassis; John F. Kennedy, Jr.
California
© San Diego State University. All rights reserved.
  • Multi-Media Collection
English
Text
36 pages
Yes
BROWNANDREAS; awd-001; fs-br-bu-049; 004-017-009B; NEG-00-328; NEG-08-743
  • San Diego State University Library and Information Access, Special Collections and University Archives
Document
PDF
46.91 MB
Browse the items