Newsman Mudd Donates Book Collection

Retired journalist Roger Mudd has donated his 1,500 volume collection of 20th-century Southern writers to Washington and Lee University, the school said.

First issue or first editions of the complete works of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren and almost 200 other writers are included in the gift, a university statement said Friday.

The former CBS newsman and co-anchor of NBC's ''Nightly News'' handed over the first 100 volumes last month during weekend inauguration celebrations for new president Ken Ruscio.

Mudd, 78, of McLean, is a 1950 graduate of Washington and Lee. He began collecting books as an undergraduate, inspired by one of his professors, Marshall Fishwick. Fishwick was a professor of American Studies at the university from 1949 to 1962, and later at Virginia Tech. He died earlier this year.

Mudd's donation was made in Fishwick's memory, the university said.

Mudd began his journalism news career in 1953 as a reporter for The Richmond News Leader, an afternoon newspaper that merged with the Richmond Times-Dispatch 1992.