Over the course of many years Thomas and Barbara McDermott assembled a collection
of over a thousand first editions of mid 20th century American and English
authors. In 1975 they donated the collection to the University Library where
it resides today in Special Collections and Archives. Many of the authors
are part of the American “Beat” generation writing in the 1950s.
These include Richard Brautigan, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Gregory
Corso, Robert Greeley, Robert Duncan, William Everson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
William H. Gass, Allen Ginsberg, Lenore Kandel, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Michael
McClure, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, and William Carlos
Williams. Other writers flourishing between the 1930s through the early 1970s
such as Samuel Beckett, William Faulker, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Anais
Nin, Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein, Kurt Vonegut, Diane Wakoski, and Edmund
Wilson are well represented in the collection. The Library has continued to
add first, limited, and other rare editions of these authors from gifts or
purchases.
