Meet the ILAB Mentors - Laurence Worms of Ash Rare Books (ABA UK)

In December 2016, ILAB launched a new Mentoring Programme, which aims to help young or recently established booksellers throughout the world by offering support and counselling on a one to one basis.

In our new series "Meet the ILAB Mentors", we would like to present those booksellers who are volunteering their time for newer entrants to the antiquarian and rare book trade!

Laurence Worms of Ash Rare Books

Collectors, dealers, librarians and scholars have known Laurence for many years. Laurence is a former Honorary Secretary and a former President of the British Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association and a former rare book trade representative on the British National Book Committee.
He is also a former member of the Council of the Bibliographical Society and continues to serve on the Council of the London Topographical Society. His “Bookhunter on Safari” blog is widely followed in the rare book trade.

He issued his first modern literature catalogue (1,000 items) in 1975, the first in a series which has included such highlights as Catalogue 50 (Seamus Heaney) 1998, Catalogue 57 (T. S. Eliot) 2000, and Catalogue 75 (Barbara Jones) 2004. He is a contributor to “The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain” (Vol 4, 2002), the “Oxford Dictionary of National Biography” (2004), the “Oxford Companion to the Book” (2010), and the ongoing “History of Cartography” being published by the Chicago University Press, etc. He is the co-author, with Ashley Baynton-Williams, of “British Map Engravers: A Dictionary of Engravers, Lithographers and Their Principal Employers to 1850” (2011) and is also the author of a booklet on “Cataloguing for Booksellers” (2015).

Nowadays working from home, he continues to issue regular catalogues and also writes and lectures on various aspects of the history of the book and map trades. He has lectured at the universities of Cambridge, London, Reading and Sheffield, as well as at the Bibliographical Society, the British Library, the Royal Geographical Society, the Warburg Institute and at Gresham College. He teaches annually at the London Rare Books School (Institute of English Studies, University of London), where he has been a course tutor since its inception ten years ago.

“I am more than happy to try and pass on to a new generation some of the things I have learnt over a lifetime in books, but there are severe constraints on what can be done at long distance, and would prefer, where possible, to work face-to-face with people here in London – within reach of the books themselves and surrounded by examples of everything we might need to talk about”.

A number of articles that were first published on Laurence's blog, have appeared on the ILAB website in recent years. Laurence has travelled the UK, first as "The President on Safari" during his time as president of the ABA and later as "Bookhunter on Safari". These are wonderful accounts of the world of antiquarian bookselling; personal and very collegial but also academic. These are particularly valuable insights at a time when publications about our trade are becoming fewer and fewer.

Edinburgh Era – McNaughtan’s Bookshop

British Library Exhibition Review - Maps and the 20th Century : Drawing the Line

Collecting - J. & F. Harwood of Fenchurch Street

Collecting Crime (Fiction) - A Very Shocking Shocker


This is only a selection of articles, please keep coming back and follow the blog or meet Laurence at book fairs and functions:
The Bookhunter on Safari

Contact Laurence:
Phone:+44 (0)20 8672 2263
Email: books@ashrare.com
For full details, please go here.