Opening hours are:

Sunday, 9 June, By Appointment
10-15 June 10:00 – 6:00
The Gallery in Cork Street (http://www.galleryincorkstreet.com/)

By Barbara Kaye Muir

In 1977, the 24th ILAB Congress and 7th ILAB International Antiquarian Book Fair took place in Düsseldorf, Germany. On this occasion, Karl H. Pressler, former editor of the German booksellers’ magazine “Aus dem Antiquariat”, published a special issue with articles about the League and its history written by representatives of the international rare book trade such as Menno Hertzberger, Helmuth Domizlaff, Percy H. Muir, Georges A. Deny, Dr. Lotte Roth-Wölfle, Stanley Crowe, and Barbara Kaye Muir.

The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association (ABA) is delighted to announce that the St Bride Foundation will be the official charity of the London International Antiquarian Book Fair which opens on Thursday June 13 and runs until Saturday June 15.

The St Bride Foundation was created in the 1890s originally as a social, educational and cultural centre and housed both a technical library and printing school providing tuition for local printers and students. The school eventually outgrew its premises and relocated, ultimately becoming part of what is now the London College of Communication. Much of the equipment remained on site and a new Printing Workshop re-opened in 2010 bringing the teaching of printing back to Fleet Street. The Foundation still provides the only library in the UK entirely devoted to the history of printing and allied crafts.

For more information please visit www.olympiabookfair.com

‘Cordially yours, Edward Friehold’: Letters to a New Zealand Collector

From Helen Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road to Joel Silver’s Dr Rosenbach and Mr Lilly, the correspondence between collectors and members of the antiquarian book trade offers a rich resource for research and publication. One need only scan the pages of appendix five of Out of Print and Into Profit to get a rough idea of the number of monograph memoirs based on letters and other archival sources, not counting of course reminiscences, stories and histories published as articles in journals and periodicals.[i]

By Stanley Crowe

In 1977, the 24th ILAB Congress and 7th ILAB International Antiquarian Book Fair took place in Düsseldorf, Germany. On this occasion, Karl H. Pressler, the former editor of the German booksellers magazine “Aus dem Antiquariat”, published a special issue with articles about the League and its history written by representatives of the international rare book trade such as Menno Hertzberger, Helmuth Domizlaff, Percy H. Muir, Georges A. Deny, Dr. Lotte Roth-Wölfle and Stanley Crowe.

From a Special Correspondent

In 1906 Frank Karslake, a second-hand bookseller, called a few colleagues together and founded the Secondhand Booksellers’ Association. It was the first organization of its kind in the world; but its ambitions and scope were modest. The annual subscription was one shilling, and beyond the obligation to exchange information on bad debtors and book thieves no one seemed at all clear what its purpose was to be.

She’s relaxing on the sofa with her headphones on; her friend is listening to a novel. Between them they can get hold of pretty well anything they choose to hear – literature or music – channel-hopping from dance to Wagner to poetry or from philosophy to novels. The year is 1895 and the days of reading from printed books seem to be numbered.

This is a collaborative post by Brooke Palmieri and Daryl Green and can be found cross-posted on both of their blogs (8vo and Echoes from the Vault)

In August 2011 Brooke Palmieri wrote an entry over at her blog, 8vo, about a discovery she made while cataloguing a book for Sokol Books Ltd: an unassuming copy of an incunable on the authority of the pope...

Maggs Counterculture and Strange Attractor present ‘Unstable’. New and old artwork from Battle Of The Eyes (Savage Pencil and Eyeball), Joel Biroco, Julian House and Cathy Ward, at Maggs Gallery; 50 Hays Mews. London W1J5QJ

Click here for the catalogue

The following article appeared in the Financial Times of 8th November, 1952, and was reprinted by kind permission of the Editor in ABA Newsletter No. 20

Quaritch was a great name in bookselling in 1900 as it is today. But there was more than this. The business of dealing in books in not compatible with quick profits on turnover. The most successful dealers are not those who buy books which they know they can sell straight away, but those who hold stocks.