that you have a limited life span left.
When you're told, well, it's gonna be measured in months
rather than years, it gives you an opportunity
to make arrangements for things like the collection.
(inspiring orchestral music)
- [Jay] Bob Connors began collecting rare books
about five years ago.
He acquired some 400 volumes,
many from the earliest days of books.
- Let's start with this one, okay.
- Okay.
[Jay] And then just six months before we met Bob,
he learned he had incurable cancer.
- [Bob] This book is my favorite book.
It's the oldest book.
- [Jay] This edition of St. Augustine's Confessions
was printed in 1475, only about 20 years
after the Gutenberg Bible.
- [Bob] But there's also these illuminations.
After it was printed, they came back in and added these--
- [Jay] Soon after he learned he had cancer,
Bob decided to offer the collection
to The University of Chicago,
because he credits the university
with inspiring his collecting.
- When I retired, I told myself I was gonna do two things.
I was gonna travel and study.
- [Jay] That was 10 years earlier when Bob was 60.
The travel took Bob and his wife
and daughters around the world.
He studied in, what The University of Chicago calls,
its basic program, in-depth classes in the Great Books
of Western Civilization,
and as Bob dove into the ideas,
he became especially fascinated by the books themselves.
- Books are an opening to an intellectual
and a magical world.
All these great stories and great ideas
are embodied in these books.
- [Jay] Bob bought rare additions,
the books he was studying in the basic program.
He started with the Victorian era writer, Thomas Hardy,
and collected nearly all of Hardy's works.
As his studies moved back in time,
it was the oldest books that captivated him,
because of the way they made knowledge more accessible.
- Before that when you had to be in a monastery
or in a library to get access to these texts,
and that's why I'm so happy
that they found a really good home.
- Elizabeth Frengel is the curator of rare books
at The University of Chicago library.
- This collection is very remarkable for its collection
of books that represent the history of early printing,
and we call those incunabula,
and it comes from the Latin word meaning, from the cradle.
- [Jay] Incunabula are books printed before 1501.
- His collection includes 12 incunabula titles,
and that increased our holdings here at The University
of Chicago Library significantly.
- [Jay] Bob's collection has been appraised
at nearly half a million dollars,
but Elizabeth Frengel says it takes more than money
to assemble this significant a collection
in just five years.
She says, Bob has become extremely knowledgeable
about book history.
- Another value with these old books, by the way.
Okay, notice these little scribblings in the margins.
- [Jay] what are those?
- [Bob] Scribblings, but they're--
- [Jay] You mean by readers?
- [Bob] Yes, but scholars will come in just
to read the marginalia.
They want to know how scholars
back then interpreted these books.
- [Jay] Despite the monetary value of the collection,
Bob says he preferred to donate it as a whole
rather than sell it off in pieces.
- [Bob] I mean, one of the things, again,
about knowing you have a limited time left,
one of the things you think about is legacy.
What mark have I left in the world?
What will live beyond me?
And this collection will.
This is a very important part of my legacy
that I'm very proud of, frankly.
These books, which have survived, in some cases, 500 years,
they'll be around for another 500 years,
and scholars will still want to come in
and look at the actual books.