SEVEN THOUSAND BOOKS PRESENTED TO LIBRARY

Over seven thousand volumes have been given to the College Library this year by the bequests and gifts of four Harvard graduates, it was learned yesterday. These donations include books in several foreign languages, as well as a number of rare first editions.

The first gift, from C. H. Grandgent '83, professor of Romance Languages, Emeritus, consisted of about 2,000 volumes and pamphlets on Italian and Romance literature, philology, and phonetics. Professor Grandgent is a recognized authority in all of these fields, and these works are for the most part books that he has used in his college work.

176 Rare Volumes

On January 16, the Library received the second gift, a bequest of 176 rare volumes left to the Library by the late Dr. W. S. Thayer '85, former member of the Board of Overseers. Despite its small size, this collection is of great interest, and contains a number of incunabula and several Aldine editions of the Classics. There are also some unusual items of Americana, such as the first book printed in Connecticut, the Saybrook "Confession of Faith," New London, 1711.

Perhaps the most unusual of these four gifts was the bequest of Winward Prescott '09, late assistant professor of English at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This consisted of 2,500 volumes of short stories that Professor Prescott had collected for his course on the short story at M.I.T.

The final gift was a library of 2,350 volumes on a wide variety of subjects. This was the bequest of Dr. W. L. Richardson '64, late professor in the Medical School. It was made up in the greater part of books by well-known writers in history and literature, with a scattering of travel and science.