"Enrich your collections, cultivate your curiosity” has been the motto of recent virtual book fairs, hosted by the French antiquarian booksellers association.
The pandemic brought much upheaval to the rare book trade worldwide and amongst other international fairs, the Paris Salon du Livre in April 2020 was cancelled. However, the board of SLAM reacted immediately and launched already in those early days in April 2020 a digital version of the Salon. An idea was born!

Virtual book fairs were developed in the course of 2020 and even a physical fair could be held at the Grand Palais in September 2020 under strictest hygienic measures.
The 2021 edition of the Salon du Livre Rare & des Experts en Objets d'art is now scheduled to take place in September 2021 at a new venue. This change of location is not linked to the pandemic but renovations in the Grand Palais which had been planned by the City of Paris for several years pre-COVID.

SLAM has found an excellent alternative, the Grand Palais Éphémère, an exceptional temporary conference venue, purpose-built on the Champ de Mars just below the Eiffel Tower. All information about the fairs and the association can be found on the Salon website, one of the sites which went live only a few days ago: https://salondulivrerare.com/

A second site: www.amorlibrorum.fr, adopting the motto of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), leads to the virtual rare book fairs organised by SLAM of which one event starts today: The monthly "E-Rendez-Vous”. Every 3rd of the month, this fair allows dealers to display 3 books for 3 days. Speed-dating for bibliophiles!

This new concept was launched by SLAM in February 2021. The fifth session starts today, with a growing success. Nearly 180 booksellers have opened an account since February and take turns each month, with an average of 90 exhibitors present. More than a third of the exhibitors are international booksellers from beyond the French borders. The bilingual site receives nearly 40% foreign visitors!

"It is a real satisfaction to be able to keep this contact, every month, not only with the visitors from France and the whole world, but also with all the colleagues. All of them have made great efforts to adapt to these new methods, and I would like to thank them and congratulate them. And they are rewarded: the percentage of books sold improves fair after fair, and since February and with the two e-salons of December and May, more than 500 books have been sold. 'Amor Librorum' is not a vain maxim but a link that survives, even if it is by internet!", says Hervé Valentin, President of SLAM.

For more information about the SLAM, the Syndicat National de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne, please click HERE or contact the SLAM Office if you wish to exhibit at any of the upcoming events or have questions about buying at a virtual fair.

Enrichez vos collections! Cultivez votre curiosité!

Laurens, congratulations on your recent election as president of the Dutch Antiquarian Booksellers Association, NVvA! First of all, could you tell us about your background, how you entered the world of rare books and describe your business?

I grew up with a bookseller father, and as a young kid I never paid much attention to his business, as any kid would do to his father's works, I suppose. School wasn't for me, so at the age of 17 I went to Australia and became a jackaroo, as they call it, and spent 2 years on a cattle station with 42,000 head of cattle, horses, bicycles and helicopters, almost half the size of the Netherlands. I liked it in Australia and after my two year work visa I went back to the Netherlands, got a student visa and went to Longreach Pastoral College and ended up as a certified station manager. My father's and my good friend Derek McDonnell from Hordern House got me the job and told me that I had received the best training to become a rare bookseller because I learnt how to bounder my fences and crush a snake!

After returning from Australia I did all kinds of jobs and ended up at the head office of Bruna, a company that owns a lot of modern bookshops around the country, where I got involved in the newest hottest thing, e-commerce, and we set up the first e-commerce shop in the Netherlands selling books. After a couple of years I did not like it any longer and in 2000 I sent my father a job application via email and to everyone's surprise he hired me. In 2008 I took over the family business and from there we acquired Asher Rare Books in 2010 and here we are, still holding up the family fort and buying and selling books all over the world, which for me is a very exciting thing to do, free as a bird, meeting new people and different books all the time.

You are busy organising the next ILAB Congress, which will take place in Amsterdam from 14 to 17 October 2024, as well as a number of other initiatives for the association. Given the demands and responsibilities of running an association, what motivates and inspires you to dedicate your time to the wider bookselling community?

Organising the ILAB Congress is a very exciting event. It is not an easy task, as the bar has been set high by the organisers of the Oxford Congress, so we have to work hard to achieve exciting visits, good food and beautiful venues for the booksellers from all over the world. What we are trying to achieve as the Dutch Antiquarian Booksellers Association is to bring some excitement back into the world of rare books. We just had a very nice Amsterdam Antiquarian Book Fair and our book fair team, really did an amazing job by taking us to a new venue, had live music, tours and we handed out a Young Collectors prize, a 1000 euro cheque that had to be spent at the fair. We also like to reach out to universities where they teach book studies or Boekwetenschappen in Dutch!

Why should ILAB booksellers attend the congress in Amsterdam? What is on offer?

Why, why is not the why, after the congress, if you haven't been to the Amsterdam Congress 2024, you will be the one asked why, why, why you haven't been there, YOU have missed out!

Who wouldn't want to spend a week in Amsterdam, being treated like a VIP by all the institutes that open their doors to us, ILAB members from all over the world. To see the treasures that are normally kept behind closed doors, in safes, in vaults, and hardly ever see the light of day. This is why you come to Amsterdam, to be one of the lucky few who have been allowed to see these special items, and on top of that, Amsterdam is the city of fun, there is something to be found in Amsterdam for everyone's taste, preference or hobby. We will all be taken around Amsterdam by canal boat, lunch at the Rijksmuseum, dinner at the Scheepvaart Musum (Maritime Museum), too much to mention and all I can say is SIGN UP for this event. Meet your colleagues from all over the world and have a great time!

And last but not least, if you are a bookseller and want to mix pleasure with business! Then join us at the Amsterdam Book Fair, which will take place immediately after the congress in the Passenger Terminal Amsterdam.

You have recently launched a young collectors' prize, a wonderful project in which you work not only with collectors but also with libraries. Could you tell us a little more about some of your ideas for encouraging the next generation of booksellers and collectors?

Yes, as I said, it was an excellent event. In cooperation with the librarian of the Rijksmuseum and the president of the Friends of the Museum of the Book. We will organise it again next year. We have learnt from our first experience and what we also want to do is to keep this group of young collectors together and have an event with them every three months, visiting a library or a bookseller or a museum.

You exhibit at many international fairs and work across borders; how would you say the trade has evolved in recent years, especially since the pandemic? Where do you see opportunities and challenges?

I think life will continue as before the pandemic, the human brain works in mysterious ways. For me, the pandemic seems to have been a long time ago, I don't think about it and we carry on as before the pandemic. I say this very lightly, but we have to remember that many of our ILAB dealers were affected by the pandemic and some of our members even lost family members.

Having said that, I think we just have to carry on doing what you do best and keep looking for those books and customers and enjoy life!

Laurens, thank you very much for your support and we look forward to meeting you and your colleagues from the NVvA in Amsterdam in October!

To contact Forum Rare Books and Laurens Hesselink, go HERE

Sign up for the 45th ILAB Congress HERE - not to be missed!

What a treat! A real stroll down Memory Lane, paralleling my time on the King’s Road in Chelsea. Philippa’s engaging account begins in 1971, the same year that I joined my brother, Peter, in the Chelsea Antique Market at 253 King’s Road. By the start of the new millennium, Chelsea Rare Books had departed the world-famous thoroughfare. We had also gone, three years previously. The rent that they were paying in 1971 of £700 pa was a distant dream. The new rents on the King’s Road made many shops unviable.

Bernard and Philippa had bought the shop, with no experience of the book trade, from Robin Greer, renowned for his specialist subject, children’s illustrators. Their first sale was a book from the famous racks outside for a 50p coin. Six months earlier and it would have been a ten bob note. Cheques were universally accepted and seldom bounced. There were no mobile phones or computers. Reference books, for most dealers, consisted of a well-thumbed run of Book Auction Records! We relied on instinct and the helpful guidance of the trade and our customers. The world seemed to be very hungry for all areas of antique and fine art collecting, and books were no exception. Dealers from Europe and North America beat a path to London and especially Chelsea. It was this lively environment that allowed our intrepid couple to learn the ropes very quickly. Bernard’s avuncular style endeared him to everyone and Phillipa’s grounded good sense and friendliness quickly made Chelsea Rare Books the ‘go to’ place.

I always enjoyed popping in there, seeking books that I hoped to profit from and a friendly conversation. Philippa speaks warmly of her various assistants over the years. They were generally young women and all of them remained friends, long after they had moved on.

“Amor Librorum Nos Unit” - the love of books unites us, the adopted motto of the book trade, seemed very much to apply here. The bonds that are formed working in books stay strong and Philippa’s various accounts of all who came into her shop, being captivated, then captured, and finally forming lifelong friendships, repeatedly demonstrates this. Even a book thief gets a kind word. Once caught, Leo gave him permission to ‘steal’ from the racks outside. Value not to exceed £1, number of books per week not to exceed one. It became a routine with our thief happily waving his latest acquisition to Leo to demonstrate his adhesion to the deal!

The various accounts of the great, the good and the not so good echoed our own experience. Many rock stars headed for the King’s Road as did film stars, the aristocracy, several politicians and famous people in general. Many were or became avid book collectors. Princess Margaret was a visitor who also opened the ABA Book fair one year. Philippa’s accounts of such visitors are a labyrinth of connected people, all demonstrating how lucky we were to be at the epicentre that was Chelsea.

Chelsea Rare Books was a hub where bibliophiles gathered to meet and discuss their various artistic and book passions.

Philippa’s book buying in Chelsea is the one area where my own experience was entirely different. Chelsea Rare Books were always being offered books. Harrington Bothers, as Peter and I were then, never seemed to get that opportunity. It’s one of the great advantages of having a shop – it inspires trust. I have found this at my own premises in Tunbridge Wells. In Chelsea we were in an antiques market - the World’s first antiques market in fact - a situation I suspect that meant we were somewhat outside the mainstream of the London book trade. In fact, one past president of the ABA gave “they trade from a market stall” as a good reason to deny us membership of the ABA.
For Philippa and Bernard, the offers of books came to them in abundance, including a collection of books from Darwin’s library, several of them inscribed! Happy days!

The Beaufort Gallery was the name they gave to their prints and maps department that they opened in the basement of the shop. In those days the breaking up of books for their plates was prolific and very controversial, as well as being against ABA rules, as it is now. Dealers from all over Europe and America were buying travel and Natural History books for the value their plates would have once separated from the binding. I know of one London bookseller who evicted an Italian dealer from his shop. The dealer had started to dismantle the books he had purchased whilst still on the premises, saying it would make transporting the plates easier! Philippa tells us that their source of engravings was from incomplete and broken books. The strange thing is that now that the craze has passed, many of the remaining intact books have little to no value.

Philippa’s amazing recall of the various book runners, thieves, awkward customers, great friendships formed and extraordinary collectors paints a wonderful picture of the times. As she has moved from selling books to writing them, I am grateful that she took the time to write this one and I heartily recommend it.

Image above: Philippa Bernard and Adrian Harrington at the Chelsea Rare Book Fair, November 2023

This review was first published in the ABA Newsletter, Winter 2024 edition - the full newsletter can be downloaded HERE

The book can be purchased at all major bookshops, such as Waterstones or similar.

Elisabeth Wittkowski (born 1998) wins Young Collectors' Award 2022 for Elton John Collection: "Self-Representation and Reception 1970-72".

On 21 February 2022, during this year's Stuttgart Rare Book Fair, Ms Elisabeth Wittkowski will receive the first prize of the 2022 Young Collector's Award with an endowment of EUR1000 by the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association.
Link to register for the online prize giving ceremony, please GO HERE

The interest in developing and curating a collection, but also the enjoyment of the objects and collection areas, transcends generations. On the occasion of the 2022 Stuttgart Rare Book Fair, the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association called for applications for a second time, since the inaugural award in 2020. The applicants, no older than 35, were asked to give an overview of their collection but also to describe their motives.

The jury chose Elisabeth Wittkowski's creative and convincing work on "Self-Representation and Reception" of Elton John in the early 1970s from among the diverse entries. On the one hand, the artist fascinates in his constant development, but the collection often shows another person behind the generally visible stage persona. Authentic representation versus media distortions of reality but also the multimedia nature of Elton John's reception reflect both the collecting theme and everyday cultural processes of the early 1970s.

"And they do collect! This, or similar, is how one might paraphrase a well-known quote. The applications for the 2022 Young Collector's Award, which is being offered for the second time, have shown that the hunt for books, as objects of desire, is unbroken and age-independent. Only the search, the possibilities of acquisition and the contents of the collectibles differ and often have a stronger connection to the present. It is always a pleasure to be able to experience and feel the enthusiasm of young people for printed matter in any form." Sibylle Wieduwilt, Chairwoman of the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association and member of the jury.

All images below were supplied by E. Wittkowski.

The Stuttgart Rare Book Fair runs 18 - 22 February 2022
Link to virtual fair: VIRTUAL STUTTGART RARE BOOK FAIR 2022

As a result of the COVID pandemic, the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association (Verband Deutscher Antiquare) developed a virtual fair platform in 2021, which in 2022 will once again give rare booksellers from Germany and abroad the opportunity to present their stock while in-person fairs and events are not yet allowed in Germany.

In 2022, the German Antiquarian Booksellers' Association welcomes 73 antiquarian bookshops and galleries from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, England and the US.

All exhibitors are listed here.

Stuttgart Fair Catalogue

The Stuttgart fair catalogue is now published and can be ordered by email from the Association's office.
An electronic version is available FOR DOWNLOAD HERE

Virtual Stuttgart Rare Book Fair 2022 opens 18 February at 12 noon German time

The virtual Stuttgart Rare Book Fair 2022 will go live on 18 February 2022 at 12 noon German time and closes on 22 February 2022 at midnight.
73 German and international antiquarian booksellers and galleries will exhibit up to 20 additional objects each. The virtual fair does not handle direct sales; sales are made directly through the dealer.
You can reach the virtual fair via ff. link: VIRTUAL STUTTGART RARE BOOK FAIR 2022

Steven Temple served as President of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of Canada from 2000 to 2002, and following that as General Secretary of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers from 2002 to 2006.
On the note of his passing, some of his former colleagues expressed their condolences.

"Steven was a very nice man and I greatly enjoyed my years with him on the committee. He was devoted to his work as secretary: we once had a meeting as a committee at Bob Fleck’s house/shop. Steven’s luggage had not been delivered with his flight, and his flight was also delayed. He arrived late, by taxi, without anything but the clothes he was wearing, but, as he said, I’ve got work to do!"
Arnoud Gerits, ILAB President of Honour

"I was around while Steven was on committee and subsequently secretary. I also used to visit his shop in Toronto. He was a kind, diligent and calming influence and a true gentleman. He was also good company and will be missed by all who knew him."
Adrian Harrington, ILAB President of Honour

"Steven was at the forefront of that generation of Toronto rare book sellers that came to prominence in the 1970s and 80s. Many Canadian institutional libraries benefited from rare items he was able to acquire and place in their collections. Steve would remember your collecting interests and an occasional email from him would arrive quoting items that you would never think you would see. Always enjoyed chatting with him on a range of topics outside of just books. Sorry to hear of his passing and condolences to his family."
Matt Doyle

"I always enjoyed visiting the shop on Queen West, or stopping at his booth at one of the Toronto Antiquarian Book Fairs. This included chatting with Steven and usually resulted in learning something I did not know about some aspect of Canadian literary rarities. ... May his memory be a blessing to his family and those who knew him."
Bernard Katz (U. of Guelph Library, retired)

An obituary was published in the Toronto Star on 10 September 2023

George "Steven" Temple, a loving husband, father figure, and esteemed bookseller in the world of books, passed away, on September 7, 2023, at the Niagara Health - St. Catharines Site, just days into his seventy-sixth year.
He leaves behind a legacy of love, literature, and a life well-lived. Steven was the beloved husband of Jennifer Temple (née Fraser), and their union brought together not only their hearts but also Jennifer's two sons, Istvan "Dugi" and Sandor Dugalin, whom Steven embraced as his own and guided as a father figure and friend. He shared a special bond with his siblings, Deborah, Gwenda, Janice, Joel Anthony, and Robert Christopher; and his dear friend, Jacob, who Steven referred to as his younger brother. Born to Norman and Marie (née Vogler), Steven Temple cultivated a remarkable bibliographical record.
He was renowned as the President with the Canadian Booksellers Association and Secretary of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and books were not just his profession but his lifelong passion.
From 1974 to 2011, he owned his own storefront on Queen Street West in Toronto, where he shared his love for literature with the world. Steven was a man of many interests and talents. He was an avid long-distance cyclist, a connoisseur of Sudoku, and a gifted tenor saxophonist. His music often lulled Jennifer to sleep with the sweet melodies of "Alice in Wonderland."
His dedication to the literary world extended beyond his business, as he sponsored the Leon Rook Award, leaving an indelible mark on the literary community. In 2011, Steven and Jennifer made the move to Welland, where he continued to embrace life with open arms. Although he possessed a rough exterior, his heart was filled with empathy and compassion for those around him.
Steven thrived on taking risks and relished competition, never willing to settle for a life within the confines of a cubicle.

In its recent edition, The Book Collector invited two booksellers, Angus O’Neill and Brian Lake, together with auctioneer Matthew Haley, to revisit a landmark series of essays on the book trade written by the late Bill Reese in 2000.

We are pleased to share Angus O’Neill’s thoughtful contribution, published in the Autumn 2025 issue. In his essay, Angus reflects on how the trade has evolved over the past half-century — from the impact of the internet on rarity and pricing, to evolving tastes, provenance research, and the reappearance of younger collectors. He also considers the challenges and opportunities posed by AI, and reaffirms the enduring value of the bookseller’s eye and expertise.

ANGUS O’NEILL - Proprietor, Omega Bookshop, trading independently since 1984.

When the late, lamented Bill Reese wrote his article ‘The Rare Book Market Today’ in April 2000, the trade in rare books had changed more in the previous twenty-five years than in the five centuries beforehand. This was largely due to the internet, of course: the most immediate change (among others, which I shall mention) was that our received ideas of rarity and availability had gone out of the window in just a few years. A typical art reference book, fought over at £85 in the 1990s, now languishes on the outside shelves at £5; as an undergraduate student in 1982, I sold a rather worn ‘uncorrected proof ’ (really, as we all know, a publisher’s rep’s advance reading copy) of John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969) for a gratifying £300 – about five weeks’ student grant, if anyone still remembers such things. I would be delighted to get that price for it now.

Another change is that people buy so much over the internet. Even though books might have seemed a perfect commodity for this, online trading still got off to a shaky start, as many of the kitchen-table booksellers didn’t understand the importance of condition, and thought bibliographical references (if they used them at all) were a kind of tinsel, as opposed to a valuable aid in describing their copy; but the market has settled down, and consumer legislation has removed a few of the pitfalls. There is of course nothing better than seeing a book (and talking to a bookseller face to face), but detailed images have turned out to be quite a good substitute for much of the jargon (‘nf in sl fr d/w’) that we grew up with.

By coincidence, my own experience of the book trade spans exactly fifty years: in 1975, a solitary outcast from boarding school, I enjoyed a holiday job in Ken Swift’s charming, rambling shop in Oxford’s Cowley Road. (This time-honoured way of entering the trade seems to have largely vanished, replaced by internships for the already well-connected, or by nothing at all.) Most of the stock was ordinary secondhand material, although it was in good condition and there was no rubbish. I remember a few highlights: Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party, illustrated by Marie Laurencin (London: The Verona Press, ‘1939’ [but 1947]), then a little way into three figures, roughly where it is now after a brief, Japan-inspired foray into four-figure territory in the late eighties (there is an auction record of £3,850 in 1989!); a very nearly perfect Lord of the Rings, sold for either £300 or £350 (a few years later, an immaculate Hobbit struggled to break free from a local auction at £400). But the shop offered a good grounding in decent, literate stock, territory in which I have ploughed a sometimes lonely furrow ever since. Since that time, I’ve worked for a ‘big firm’ (for eighteen months, as a secretary), issued catalogues, done a few fairs, owned a shop in Cecil Court in London, and carried a lot of books for many miles (although travel is more of a luxury than it once was, and the days of covering a long trip’s expenses in the first shop I visited are but a distant memory). I’ve never run an auction, nor employed large numbers of staff and it will be clear that I write from a very British perspective, but I still have time to go out buying, and to research what I find. Those are the aspects of the trade which have always appealed to me the most.

One unexpected development, which started in around 2000, was that my customers began to be born again. Not in any religious sense: but, along with many colleagues, I have noticed that nearly
all my customers today are under twenty-five or over fifty. What happened to the generation between those two? A combination of things, I suppose: the birth of the ‘digital native’ (all those solemn youngsters who so confidently asserted that the book was ‘dead’); the touching conviction that texts would somehow become free and remain incorruptible; or perhaps just lack of space and money. But all that has changed. It could be the equivalent of ‘vinyl syndrome’, in which consumers recognise that high-end audio equipment actually gives better results than a stream of digital signals; it could be the heightened awareness that information can be meddled with, hidden behind a paywall or deleted altogether; or perhaps a new generation has just discovered how beautiful and evocative the printed book can be as a physical object. Possibly the 25–50 age range is just too busy earning a living, but that never stopped bibliophiles before. Anyway, whatever the cause, all these young people are very welcome.

Tastes have changed, too. The days when even the neatest inscription was seen as a blemish are largely over, even in the more obsessive corners of the modern first edition market. I remember encountering resistance when I suggested in around 1990 that the ownership signature of the writer John Brophy did no harm to my first edition of Animal Farm. This sea change is directly down to pioneering books such as David Pearson’s Provenance Research in Book History (revised edition, 2019), but the internet is also indirectly responsible, in that when we seek information on the earlier owners of books, we are no longer confined to ODNB, the Peerage or sheer serendipity. Suddenly an entirely new cast of characters has been summoned up from the shades, and we are better off as a result: although, as usual, a little restraint in interpretation might not come amiss. Not all early owners were especially interesting, and sometimes a plethora of facts may make us (as F. E. Smith may or may not have said) ‘none the wiser, just better informed’. I remember a leading auctioneer offering a recent first edition children’s book (probably a Harry Potter) with the pompous subheading, ‘provenance: contemporary gift inscription, in mauve felt-tip pen, “Suzie with love from Nana”.’ Not much help if we don’t know who Suzie or Nana were, and I struggle to equate this with, say, John Singer Sargent’s copy (complete with Galignani book-ticket) of an early novel by Henry James.

Provenance is exciting but it can have a downside, like most positive discoveries when they fall into the wrong hands. The laudable determination of institutional libraries not to possess anything stolen or looted can sometimes lead to disproportionate concern, as when their buyers insist on a comprehensive paper trail of ownership. It is very rare to find an old book with a complete and unbroken chain of provenance: indeed, were one to acquire a book complete with its 17th-century purchase invoice from the Leipzig book fair, and a collage of noble bookplates from then to the present day, there would be a strong case for considering it part of German cultural heritage and thus blocked from export, even for the most forceful bookseller. Books are multiples, and they were made to travel – Anton Koberger, the publisher of the Nuremberg Liber chronicarum in 1493, had offices all through Europe from Lyon to Buda. But the bookseller’s duty is to persuade rather than to complain, and there are signs that increasingly productive dialogue between libraries and the trade is leading to a more satisfactory approach to this problem. Finally, on this topic, it should be stated unequivocally that the great majority of antiquarian booksellers are implacably opposed to the legal fictions which some jurisdictions apply to the acquisition of clear title, when recognisably stolen books are sold at auction: this is an anomaly which we would love to see abolished. ILAB is working on it, but it will take a while.

Some of the trends which Bill Reese pointed out twenty-five years ago have continued to develop: the rise of the private collector, for instance. The completist has largely given way to the acquirer of high spots. Decent copies of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (the first trade edition, London: Chapman and Hall, 1945) have gone in twenty-five years from high hundreds to high thousands, while the artificial rarity Basil Seal Rides Again (London: Chapman and Hall, 1963) remains stuck in the low hundreds (£188 for a lucky vendor at a Bloomsbury auction in 2004, £240 at Dominic Winter’s in 2023). Oddly, the true first of Brideshead, one of the fifty in wrappers ‘issued privately for the author’s friends’, has not fared so well: a copy fetched £2,530 in 1994, while another made a disappointing £8,960 thirty years later: perhaps its very scarcity is oV-putting. As any art dealer will tell you, there’s no point in making a market in something you can’t find. I should add that auction records are not the only price data out there, but they are relatively easy to obtain and are useful if interpreted with caution and a little cynicism: the successes are reported more conscientiously than the failures.

Good ordinary books are getting harder to sell, while highlights are ever more sought after. In 2000 and 2010, I inadvertently conducted a controlled experiment on this thesis: asked to clear eighty boxes of randomly packed books from a deceased estate, I found that the heir’s circumstances made it impossible for me to take more than forty on the first visit, and I was pleasantly surprised when a nearly forgotten number popped up on my telephone a decade later. Of the first forty boxes, thirty had to be sold wholesale for very little: the remaining ten were worth £8,000. The second time around, thirty-six boxes bit the dust, while the last four stacked up to £20,000, plus one book which even then seemed to have a way to go, and which I still have: perhaps another £20,000 for that?

The Mittelstand of the trade, the old-fashioned holistic market town shop that could find a home for every worthwhile book, is now a rarity, surviving only when it is in the happy position of owning its own freehold. There are glorious exceptions (G. David in Cambridge, for instance), but only a very few. Most of the valuable business is in the hands of a small number of firms, and there seems a lot less social mobility than there was a couple of generations ago; and, alas, that is not confined to the rare book trade.

Printing and the Mind of Man books (still a key text for the highlight collector) go from strength to strength, buoyed up in some instances by personality cults: the Darwin market, for instance, is perhaps worth a glance, as the high spots appear to have gone up roughly tenfold since 2000. An acceptable-sounding copy of On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859) fetched £19,550 against an estimate of £7,000–£9,000 at Sotheby’s in 2000, while Forum sold a rough-looking one this year for £98,280, and leaves from the original MS (used by generations of Darwin children as scrap paper) have blossomed from US$96,000 in 1999 (an ‘important leaf ’, estimated at $25,000–$35,000) to £274,000 and £490,000 in 2018. No wonder Cambridge University Library is relieved to have its notebooks back.

What next? Inevitably, the question of artificial intelligence needs to be addressed. To approach this, as an avowed sceptic, I tried to recall the details of a half-remembered remark by Aldous Huxley to the effect that ‘military intelligence bears the same relation to intelligence as military music does to music’, and so, in a vain attempt to check my memory and obtain chapter and verse, I turned to Google. The result was more telling than I expected. The ‘AI overview’, which heads the search results, begins as follows: ‘The connection between Aldous Huxley, military intelligence, and music is multifaceted. Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, has been a source of inspiration for musicians, including Iron Maiden, who created the song “Brave New World” based on the book’s themes of societal control and artificial intelligence…’ What a fine, ten-dollar word ‘multifaceted’ is! And how kind of Googleto throw in a disclaimer at the end of this word salad, stating baldly that ‘AI responses may include mistakes’. You don’t say! Lessons have been learned, as they say nowadays.

Seriously, however, a close colleague very nearly fell foul of AI, when a prospective customer asked Google what a book in his stock was worth. The title in question was William Wollaston’s The
religion of nature delineated (London: Samuel Palmer…, 1725). First printed in 1722, the work went through several editions, and one of the 1725 reprints is noteworthy for having been set in type by an argumentative American teenager, the young Benjamin Franklin: therein, of course, lies much of its value. AI completely failed to spot this: it came up with a predictably half-smart summary of online prices and auction records, suggesting a price in the mid-hundreds of dollars, not unreasonable for other editions of the book (which is more interesting than it might sound), but wholly missing the Franklin factor. I am happy to report that another customer came along, one who was willing to engage his brain rather than his keyboard, and the book sold, but it was an awkward moment and AI will only get cleverer, or at least more plausible. Cataloguing and pricing are major elements of a dealer’s skillset, but we will not have a monopoly on them for ever. Two decades ago, I was able to fool a search engine by asking ‘Who wrote Handel’s Water Music?’, but such a trick would be harder now. Nonetheless, a large part of the bookseller’s job is seeing something significant in a book which others had missed, and this seems likely to remain the case for many years to come. That’s how we buy from other dealers!
I write this in a hotel room, overlooking a railway station (shrine to a technological marvel, still working after 200 years) and a newish postmodern office block (five floors, all empty: if you don’t have to go anywhere, or come from anywhere, you don’t need to be next to the station). Today’s (and tomorrow’s) customers for rare books (another technological marvel, 570 years and counting) can buy stuff online, but they can also walk into a shop and find shelves of interesting material, all written and illustrated by real people, and historically coherent: a very modest amount of skill is enough to ascertain that the artefact hasn’t been tampered with or rewritten to please the morals of today (which will pass, as they always do). These objects sit there, waiting to be interrogated, to testify to the ineradicable human longing for wisdom and enquiry, waiting for us to apply our own imaginations to those which created them. Why would anyone feel pessimistic when books can help us make sense of our baffling world?

This article was first published in the 2025 Autumn issue of The Book Collector and is reposted here with the permission of the publisher. To read or subscribe, please visit: https://www.thebookcollector.c...

Dawn, congratulations on your recent election as the President of The Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers! Some of us have met you before at ILAB congresses and fairs, but for those who have not met you, could you share your background, how you entered the world of rare books, and describe your business?

Thanks Angelika! My background is in the performing arts and academia, running retreats and workshops; writing, performing, and producing. For some time, I was the artistic director of the Australian chapter of the Magdalena Project, an international network of women in the performing arts. I have undertaken doctoral studies in feminist performance, and for a long time I have been interested in the multitude of ways in which people make meaning in their lives. I never planned to become a bookseller, but I have always been a reader and lover of books.

I entered the world of antiquarian bookselling when I married Hamish Alcorn. He had just bought Archives Fine Books, a large second-hand bookstore in the heart of Brisbane’s central business district. Since 1985 it has occupied the entire ground floor of a heritage listed building at 40 Charlotte Street. There are approximately 300,000 books on the shelves at any given time. Most of this stock is NOT searchable online but is organised by subject and alphabetised by author. Managing this incredible space and volume is the work of Hamish and our staff. This “temple of logos” exerted an irresistible gravitational force on my being, and it was inevitable that I was eventually sucked into its orbit.

A pivotal moment on my journey towards full-time antiquarian bookselling was attending CABS in 2015. I cannot speak highly enough of its focused programme, and the generous, experienced, and informative faculty. I had helped design our website and started to catalogue our stock, but I was swimming in a sea of questions. Attending CABS provided some important answers and opened my eyes to a world of possibility. For the first time in my life something genuinely interested me as much as theatre craft.

Looking for more opportunities to grow I applied for the ILAB mentoring programme and was paired with Sally Burdon of the Asia Bookroom (Canberra). I highly recommend this programme to any bookseller looking to develop understanding of and expertise in the world of rare and antiquarian books. If CABS was a pivotal experience, the ILAB mentorship affirmed and cultivated my new direction.

Archives Fine Books has survived by being a generalist bookstore catering to a wide clientele. Over time, however, our focus in the rare and collectible side of the business has tended towards poetry, literature, history, philosophy, and the arts. I have heard that poetry doesn’t sell, but I have personal passion for it, and the more poetry I catalogue, the more poetry collectors I meet. I find this deeply satisfying.

Given the demands and responsibilities of leading an association, what motivates and inspires you to dedicate your time and efforts to furthering the interests of antiquarian booksellers?

Antiquarian booksellers occupy a unique and important place in the ecosystem of culture worldwide. We are guardians of the human impulse to understand the world and our place in it and to write it down. I want to defend and celebrate this.

When I was first asked to serve on the ANZAAB Board I felt honoured that others perceived I might have a contribution to make. I also saw it as an opportunity to “give back” to an association that had already given me so much. From the start I have been supported to grow as a bookseller by the generosity of colleagues much more experienced than myself. I was supported by ANZAAB to attend CABS in 2015 and by both ANZAAB and ILAB to attend the Pasadena ILAB Congress in 2018. The deeply collegial nature of our trade is professionally rewarding and personally satisfying. I take delight in the ideas of my fellow board members and enjoy working with them. In 2025 we will be hosting the ILAB President’s Meeting in Melbourne, and we are just starting to plan the 50 th Anniversary of ANZAAB celebrations for 2027.

How have you observed the trade evolving over the past few years since you joined the world of rare books? Are there any notable trends or changes that you believe are shaping the market for rare books?

I entered the trade when many were sounding the death knell for the open bookstore and for books in general. Many specialty bookstores around us closed or moved their stock online. Readers moved from print books to e-books and then many returned to print. Collectors are increasingly younger, and I find I am responding to diverse collection enquiries. I don’t yet feel experienced enough to predict market trends. My curiosity about what print material younger collectors are gathering and my desire to encourage them has led to the establishment of the Archives Fine Book Collecting Prize for young collectors. Ask me again after we have run the prize for ten years and I might have more to say about that.

In your opinion, what role does education play in promoting awareness and appreciation for antiquarian books, and do you plan to enhance these aspects within the association?

I think education is very important. In an era where there are shrinking opportunities for people to apprentice themselves to a bookseller in an open bookstore, courses like CABS, YABS, and rare book schools are invaluable. Since attending CABS in 2015 I have been keen to see an educational initiative specifically for booksellers established in our region. We don’t have the volume of booksellers to support an annual week-long event, but ANZAAB has partnered with the 2024 Australia and New Zealand Rare Book School to provide a bursary for a bookseller to attend the course of their choice.

ILAB has also generously agreed to support a bookseller residing outside Australia to attend. The 2024 Rare Book School is being hosted by the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne and will run from February 4-9 (links below).

For some time ANZAAB has supported a member to attend an ILAB Congress. We see this as an educational and relationship building opportunity for members wishing to expand their horizons. Tim White of Books for Cooks (Melbourne) was the recipient of the bursary to attend the Oxford Congress in 2022, and we will shortly be announcing the successful applicant to the 2024 ILAB Congress in Amsterdam.

ILAB national association presidents will meet in July 2025 in Melbourne for the ILAB Presidents’ Meeting; we look forward to meeting you and your colleagues in Australia.

The ILAB Committee thanks you and your colleagues for your efforts in organizing such a meeting.

We are very much looking forward to welcoming you to Australia!

Dr. Dawn Albinger
President
Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers

FURTHER LINKS

https://anzaab.com/

https://www.anzrbs.org/2024-anzrbs-courses

https://www.anzrbs.org/bursaries-awards

Interview: Angelika Elstner

Well-known bookseller and highly engaged supporter of the trade, Deborah Coltham will now steer the ship for the ABA for the coming two years.

After graduating from St Andrews University in 1994 with an MA in English Literature and Medieval History, Deborah joined Pickering & Chatto Ltd as an apprentice to the Head of the Science and Medicine Department, subsequently taking over the role in 1998. She established Deborah Coltham Rare Books in July 2006 and continues to specialise in a wide range of scientific and medical subjects, with books by or about women being a particular area of interest. She has worked closely with major libraries, institutions and individual collectors both in the UK and worldwide. Deborah has been part of the ABA National Council since 2017, for many years in the role of Membership Secretary and Vice-President. Besides her role as president of the ABA, Deborah organises and sits on the judging panel of the ABA National Book Collecting Prize, and is a faculty member of the annual York Annual Antiquarian Book Seminar.

In September 2022, Deborah played a key role in running our very successful 2nd ILAB Symposium at the Bodleian Library's Weston Library, moderating the event.

In a recent letter to members, Deborah looks back at the past few - stormy - years, when the book trade had to weather the unprecedented pandemic and many changes and challenges resulting from it.

It is with immense pride that I write to you in my new capacity as ABA President, having been elected to take over the role from Pom Harrington at the AGM last Wednesday. I am delighted that Bernard Shapiro was duly elected as Vice President, and that Daniel Crouch was happy to remain in post as Treasurer.

I am fortunate to be taking over the role in much calmer waters than in 2021. Pom has worked tirelessly on behalf of the ABA, not only during his Presidency, but for many years, and the trade as a whole has benefitted enormously from his forward thinking, dedication and dynamism. Thank you, Pom, for all that you have done, and all that you will no doubt continue to do on behalf of the rare book trade, and more formally in your role as the Chair of Firsts London. I have a hard act to follow!

Thanks too, must go to Daniel, whose fiscal prudence, and the triumphant ILAB Congress, means that we find ourselves in a more stable position than for some time. Especial thanks to Riley Grant: the number of personal tributes paid to her within the recent annual reports is a clear testament to how much we all rely on her, and the excellent job she does on our behalf as the first point of call for the Association.

May I also take the opportunity to thank Roger Treglown, who has stepped down from Council. First elected in 2000, he has taken on a number of roles, culminating in his Presidency from 2019-2021. The pandemic made for a challengingly two years and denied him an official hand-over to Pom, and so it was good that we could offer him our thanks and appreciation in person last Wednesday. Angus O’Neill is also stepping away from his advisory role on the Management Committee after several years. Recently elected as Vice President of ILAB, alongside Christopher Bailey as ILAB Treasurer, their roles ensure that the ABA will retain its prominent position internationally.

As a trade association, we have a wealth of knowledge and experience amongst our members that is second to none, and which forms the bedrock of the Association. We have a growing number of dealers setting out on their own, or gaining experience in established firms, and who bring with them new ideas and ways of connecting with customers. A number of those entering the Association are graduates of YABS, the brainchild of Anthony Smithson and Alice Laverty of Keel Row Books, with fellow director Jonathan Kearns. Now under the aegis of the ABA Educational Trust, I am sure that it will no doubt continue to prove to be an invaluable conduit for potential new members of the future.

Turning to book fairs, which are so vital and important to many of us, thanks to all who exhibited at Edinburgh. As always, it was pleasure to visit, albeit fleetingly, and it was good to see a steady stream of visitors, and the number of younger collectors in evidence which was encouraging to see. ...

So many members quietly work behind the scenes to help promote the Association, for which many thanks. It does not go unnoticed if perhaps not always trumpeted.

We have many wise heads and smart business brains sitting on Council, who represent the many facets of the book trade from several parts of the country, including sole traders working from home, smaller independent shop owners, long-established family firms, and larger, globally recognised companies. All care passionately about our trade and are extremely active and motivated. I may be the visible spokesperson for the next two years, but it is very much a collective effort, and we are all looking forward to the months ahead.

Deborah Coltham
ABA President

When the fair first started in 1957, Attenborough was abroad filming along the Great Barrier Reef; this year he is cutting the tape, officially opening the event’s sixty-first outing. He is, as he put it, “unabashedly a collector”; he bought his first rare book when he was fifteen. It was On the Origin of Species, naturally – not the first edition but the sixth, in which Darwin introduced the word “evolution”.

To a collector, the specifics of different editions matter deeply, far more than they do to the general reader. They are an important element in the complex of features that determine how well a book fits one’s collection, how badly one wants it. Walter Benjamin observed that “the period, the region, the craftsmanship, the former ownership – for a true collector the whole background of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia”. As Attenborough notes wryly, one doesn’t necessarily collect books in order to read them.

This year the fair takes place in an exhibition centre in the middle of Battersea Park. It is vast. A hundred and eighty bookdealers have set up stalls, transporting their wares from Vienna, Vancouver, Sydney, San Francisco, among other places. These include your straightforward high-end treasures: an exquisite hand-coloured first edition of Vesalius, yours for £850,000; a Kelmscott Chaucer, £60,000; various early Shakespeare folios. There are also association copies: Alan Rickman’s Harry Potterbooks; one of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories signed by Ringo Starr. A fair few of the dealers specialize in modern first editions: Woolf’s Kew Gardens, set, printed and stitched by the Woolfs themselves; Joyce’s Ulysses in its Greek blue covers. It is like walking around the gallery of a major library, with the added thrill of knowing that, if you just sold one your vital organs, you might take home one of the exhibits.

>> This article was first published in the Times Literary Supplement and is reposted here with permission of the editor. View original article here.

For years Sheila Markham has been interviewing booksellers from all over the world. These interviews, well known and much loved in the trade, are some of the most interesting accounts of our trade, portraying so many fascinating personalities and backgrounds.

A few days before the opening of the Melbourne Rare Book Fair, we asked Sheila if we could share this latest interview with Sally Burdon and, of course, received a warm and positive response.

Sally Burdon shares insights from a lifelong career in the rare book trade, as well as her work with ANZAAB, the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers, and ILAB. Fulfilling many roles, Sally Burdon has shaped ILAB over the past few years, initiating and leading many projects that will serve our community well into the future.

More bookseller interviews by Sheila Markham can be found on her website HERE

To visit the Melbourne Rare Book Fair this week, check out the fair website HERE

Image above: Ephemera collection exhibited by Picture This Gallery at FIRSTS HONG KONG

After the success of the "China in Print" fair, which ran until 2018, the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association (ABA) is now relaunching the Hong Kong event under its "FIRSTS" brand.

We spoke to Christopher Bailey of Picture This Gallery, who has been based in Sunningdale in the UK since 2016, after trading from Hong Kong for many years.
Christopher and his wife Pamela run an online art gallery that combines contemporary art with old and rare objects. The gallery showcases a wide range of photography by renowned international and local photographers, as well as vintage and contemporary posters, antiquarian books and maps.

Chris, you ran an art gallery in Hong Kong for many years. Could you tell us a little bit about what first drew you to Hong Kong and how your journey in the city began?

I arrived in Hong Kong all the way back in 1992 and worked in finance for 10 years. Needing a different challenge and change of lifestyle, my wife Pamela and I founded Picture This Gallery in 2002. We ran a gallery and a retail shop in Central district, offering rare books, antique maps, vintage posters and contemporary photography. It was an exciting time in the years after the Handover, we were always busy, had a lot of fun and curated some fabulous exhibitions. But after 24 years living in Hong Kong, it was time for a change of air, so we packed up in Hong Kong in 2016 and moved the business and our three teenagers back to the UK. Since then, we have refocused the business though most of our trade and major clients continue to be in the Far East.

How have you seen the book trade in Hong Kong and Asia develop over the years? Have there been any trends or changes in collecting habits that you have noticed?

The market for international books has grown steadily over the years and the Hong Kong book fair, in its various guises since 2007 has been an important part of connecting Western dealers and Asian collectors. But it is worth remembering that this stands alongside a much larger market in Asian language material which most western dealers are only tangentially involved in. Interest in Western literature, illustrated books and fine bindings have also grown and with continued exposure in these areas, I definitely expect we are seeing a deeper collector base develop around the region.

Robert, after many years on the board of the Austrian association and also on the board of ILAB until 2022, congratulations on your election as the new President of the Verband der Antiquare Österreichs! Many colleagues will know you from the various international fairs you participate in around the world. But for those who don't know you yet, may we ask you to introduce yourself a little?

Thanks for the congratulations. I started working as an antiquarian bookseller in 1980. I have been running my own business since 1996. Since my childhood I have loved old books, anything printed or drawn on paper. I have never had another job.

What was it that sparked your interest in entering the world of antiquarian books?

It was fascinating from the start to meet interesting, unique and sometimes quite quirky people who turned out to be collectors and colleagues. Dealing with exceptional books and prints has always been a motivation to keep going.

You must own and run one of the most beautiful antiquarian bookshops in the world, and anyone visiting the cultural city of Vienna should not miss a visit. We know that the shop is regularly booked by film crews. Given that Vienna has lost so many rare bookshops in recent decades, what makes this place so special?

Yes, the shop was founded in 1920 and still looks the same as it did back then. The store is located close to where Alma Mahler, Franz Werfel, Adele Bloch-Bauer, Arthur Schnitzler and other famous people lived. It is one of the few remaining old bookshops in Vienna. Unfortunately, more and more Instagram tourists come here just to take photos. Film shoots by an Oscar-winning director will soon be taking place here again.