In the Spring of 1992, Wilbur Lindsay Fugate, a graduate of Davidson College, class of 1934, and the University of Virginia Law School, donated his collection of one hundred first edition books to the E. H. Little Library. The collection includes works by eighty-three authors and represents the “best” in English and American literature.
A book lover and collector, Dr. Fugate modeled his collection on one by Frederick Loches, an Englishman who in 1886 made a collection of first editions in which “every book appeared to have been bought for a special reason and to form an integral part of the whole.” First editions are significantly valuable because they give the reader a feeling of particular closeness to the author. As described by Fugate, “the first edition is the author’s edition because it is the way the author wanted the book, first saw it and first took pride in it.” An audio segment of Fugate’s presentation of the collection is available online.
The Fugate Collection contains those books which, as described by Henry VanDyke in his Companionable Books, are “the best sellers [because they] do not go out of print and are everybody’s books.” The collection is divided into twelve categories beginning with “Eighteenth Century Literature and Before” and ending with “From 1940 to the Present.” The twelve categories are listed below:
- Eighteenth Century or Before
- Early 1800’s
- Dickens and Thackerary
- Macaulay’s History of England
- English Victorians
- American Victorians
- Writers in Two Countries
- Early Twentieth Century English Authors
- Early Twentieth Century American Authors
- Post World War I
- The 1930’s
- From 1940 to the Present
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