Tulsa Lawyer and Businessman Rush Molland Greenslade (1883-1963) was a long term friend to the University and McFarlin Library. In 1952, he and a group called the Tulsa Bibliophiles endowed the first rare book room. Located in the north basement of the library, it housed the library’s Walt Whitman collection. In May 1966, the library received his bequest of a collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century first editions and related volumes. Some of the authors represented by first editions in this collection are Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Of particular note in this collection are first editions of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones and Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, both of which are important texts in the evolution of the novel.
We have been retrospectively identifying the items in this collection and bringing them together digitally with the use of the subject heading “Rush Greenslade Library.”