Henry Newton Stevens (1855-1930), who became the first the first president of the ABA in 1907, was born in Camden Town, London, on 7th June 1855. He was the only son of the celebrated, indeed legendary, bookseller Henry Stevens of Vermont (1819-1886) and his wife Mary Kuczynski, née Newton (1819-1891), who had married at St. Pancras the previous year.  The elder Henry Stevens had arrived in London in the mid 1840s and rather set the book world ablaze, virtually inventing Americana as a bookselling category, helping to build some of the world’s greatest libraries – finding material for John Carter Brown Library, James Lenox, Pierpont Morgan, Henry Huntington, William Folger – and founding a business which passed on standards of bibliography, expertise in the rarest of books, and scrupulous collation to his son, Henry Newton Stevens ...

Benjamin Dawson Maggs (1862-1935) of Maggs Brothers in London was the second ABA president in 1908.

Walter James Leighton (1850-1917), who became president of the ABA in 1909, was born into the very heart of the London book-trade – certainly the third and quite probably the fourth generation of a family of London bookbinders. He was first cousin to the celebrated John Leighton (1822-1912), artist and designer, and the wider family almost certainly included Jane and Robert Leighton of Leighton, Son & Hodge, the well-known Victorian publishers’ binders, as well as the Leighton Brothers (George Cargill Leighton, Charles Blair Leighton and Stephen Leighton), pioneers of colour printing (see A Blocking of Leightons).  

James Tregaskis (1850-1926) became the fourth ABA president in 1910 – but was the first president not born in London and the first not to have been born into the trade. In fact, he did not become a bookseller until he was almost forty. From there, he rose to become one of the leading booksellers in the world and to reach the very pinnacle of the trade.

His story is a slightly curious one. He was born in 1850 at St. Day, a village not far from Redruth in Cornwall – the son of James Tregaskis and his wife, Fanny Blenkinsop ...

Walter Vernon Daniell (1858-1928) was born in London in 1858, seemingly the youngest of the dozen or so children of the bookseller, printseller and publisher Edward Daniell (1807-1892) and his wife Elizabeth Bowring (1815-1894), who had married at St. Marylebone in 1835. Edward Daniell initially had premises in Wigmore Street but from the mid 1830s worked from 53 Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square.  He was particularly known for dealing in engraved portraits, producing catalogues such as The British Gallery of Historical Portraits 1854; Daniell’s Portrait Catalogue 1871 and Portraits of the Parliamentary Officers of the Great Civil War : being the Facsimiles of a Rare Series Published in 1647; With New Brief Biographical Notices 1873.

Benjamin Henry Blackwell (1849-1924) opened the Oxford bookshop that still bears his name in 1879. He was ABA president in 1912.

Originally from Staffordshire, H. Douglas Vincent (1858-1934) was ABA president in 1913.

Robert Bowes (1835-1919), who became ABA president in 1914, was born near Stewarton in rural Ayrshire on the 22nd August 1835, the son of another Robert Bowes, a man described on the 1841 Census as an agricultural labourer (although elsewhere as a gardener). Not perhaps the most advantageous start in life for someone with a life to make in the world of books, except that his mother, born Margaret Macmillan on the Isle of Arran in 1801, happened to be the somewhat older sister of the brothers Daniel and Alexander Macmillan who, starting from no more promising

George Edward Gregory (1852-1930) of Bath was president of what was then known as the International Association of  Antiquarian Booksellers through the difficult years of the Great War between 1915 and 1918.  He was born at Bath in 1852, the son of William Gregory, himself born and bred in Bath, and his wife Margaret, who came from Cardiganshire.  William Gregory was a master bookbinder, then living at 14 York Street and employing two men. 

By 1871, the family now living at 11 Prior Park Cottages, George Gregory was himself a bookbinder.  In 1878 he married Isabel Marriott Clement, a pianist who had once lodged with another Bath bookbinder, John Maggs.  The couple set up house at 1 Upper East Hayes Terrace, Walcot – their first and only child being born the following year.  The 1881 Census entertainingly lists the occupation of two-year-old George Bernard Gregory as “little beggar”. 

Albert Isaac Myers (1865-1944) was born at Aldgate in London in 1865, the son of Moss (Morris) Myers and his wife Hannah Isaacs, who had married in 1852.  His father was variously described as a general dealer or auctioneer, but by 1881 was employed as the superintendant of the Kingsbury Road Jewish Cemetery.  The Census return for that year records Albert Isaac Myers – here, as in all early archival records, referred to simply as Isaac – as a fourteen-year-old bookseller’s apprentice. 

By 1889 he was in business for himself as Myers & Co., initially in partnership with Samuel Isaacs (until 1892) with premises at both 12 Borough High Street and in Holywell Street (or Booksellers’ Row) ...

Frederick William Chaundy (1866-1949), ABA president in 1921, was born at Oxford, the eldest son of Henry Chaundy, a cabinet-maker, and his wife Mary Neal Maxey, who had married in 1864. By 1881 the family were living in Observatory Street and Frederick W. Chaundy, at fourteen years of age, was already apprenticed to a local bookseller. 

in 1890 he married Annie Sheppard (1865-1914), the daughter of a local printer and compositor. The young couple lived for a time in Bristol, both working in a bookshop there, and it was in Bristol that their only child, Leslie Frederick Chaundy (1891-1940) was born. The family returned to Oxford and by 1901 were living at the famous old bookshop at 104 High Street – now the home of Sanders of Oxford but then the premises of William George’s Sons, by whom Chaundy was employed as manager. 

Percy John Dobell (1871-1956) was the son of London bookseller, Bertram Dobell, in whose honour he produced a memorial volume in 1914.  

George Edmund Brimley Bowes (1874-1946) of Bowes & Bowes in Cambridge followed his father, Robert Bowes, in becoming president of the ABA. He published a paper on "Education and the Book Trade" in 1920.  

H. J. Brown was ABA president in 1924.

Sir Basil Henry Blackwell (1889-1984) was the son of Benjamin Henry Blackwell, who had been ABA president in 1912. He added publishing to the Blackwell firm's bookselling activities and was also involved in the Shakespeare Head Press.  He took over the business on his father's death in 1924, was ABA president shortly afterwards, as well as president of the (new) Booksellers' Association in 1934-1936.  He was knighted in 1956, elected an honorary fellow of Merton College in 1959, and served as president of the Classical Association (1964-1965) and of the English Association (1969-1970). On the hundredth anniversary of the founding of B. H. Blackwell Ltd. in 1979, Oxford University made him an honorary DCL.