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Dan Brown donates €300,000 to Amsterdam library
Dan Brown has donated €300,000 (£237,000) to a library in Amsterdam to help make texts on alchemy and mysticism which inspired his novels to be viewable online by the public.
The author donated the money to the Ritman Library, known as the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam, after the manuscripts held there inspired his thrillers The Lost Symbol and Inferno (both Corgi).
The library holds around 4,600 manuscripts on subjects such as alchemy and mysticism which were printed before 1900, according to The Guardian.
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“They are currently embarking on a bold quest to digitise and preserve a large part of their collection and I feel very honoured to play a small part in that process. I look forward with enormous anticipation to the day, coming very soon, when people around the world will be able to access these texts digitally through The Ritman Library.
Esther Ritman, director of Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, added: “This library of wisdom is a treasure house of the human mind. It is a place where books engage with people...This library is a place where science, spirituality and society meet.
“It’s a true embassy of the free mind, a home to anyone seeking and offering inspiration and power of thought. It’s the place where Dan Brown found and offered inspiration.”
