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SDSU ALUMNUS ANDREAS BROWN RECEIVES HONORARY DOCTORATE OF FINE ARTS |
Andreas Brown, president and owner of the legendary Gotham Book Mart and Gallery in New York City for more than 37 years, is recognized across the country by book dealers, authors, and libraries as being the foremost bookseller and literary estate consultant in the field of American literature The Gotham is frequently considered the most important independent bookstore in America.
A major focus of his work is literary estate consultation, not only for significant collectors but also for the authors themselves. His clients include Saul Bellow, E.E. Cummings, John Updike, and the estates of Truman Capote and Henry Miller. His connections and knowledge have meant that significant literary collections have gone to many deserving libraries across the country, including the New York Public Library, Columbia, Harvard and Yale universities, as well as the University of California at Berkeley. He has close relationships 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; playwrights Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and Lanford Wilson.
He has given significant collections of literature to the SDSU library: American first editions, many of them signed; Kennedy books and ephemera; postcards; and most recently large numbers of Edward Gorey items. Mr. Brown gave our collection its oldest item, a Decretal of Pope Boniface, circa 1235. Among his most recent gifts is a very valuable collection of his own correspondence with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Mr. Brown graduated from San Diego State University with honors in 1955, and was the recipient of the SDSU Library’s first Alumni of Distinction award in 2003. He received the Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree at the PSFA Commencement ceremony in May 2005.
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