The May 2013 seminar in the book-collecting series organised jointly by the Institute of English Studies (London University) and the Rare Book Society will be given by Brian Alderson. Brian is one of the pioneers of children’s literature studies in Britain, a prolific writer, editor, reviewer, compiler and translator. He is a leading bibliographer in the field of children’s literature and a collector in his own right; his knowledge of children’s publishing and book production in Britain is unmatched.

Among his more recent publications are Edward Ardizzone : A Bibliographic Commentary 2003; Be Merry and Wise : Origins of Children’s Book Publishing in England, 1650-1850 (with Felix de Marez Oyens) 2006 and, published this year (with Andrea Immel), a commentary with facsimiles, of the legendary nursery-rhyme assemblage of 1744 : Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song-Book; voll.II.

The July 2013 seminar in the book-collecting series organised jointly by the Institute of English Studies (London University) and the Rare Book Society will be given by Rob Shepherd of Sangorski & Sutcliffe, founded in 1901 and one of the oldest surviving hand bookbinding companies in England.

The business, which merged with the even older Zaehnsdorf bindery in 1988, was founded by Francis Sangorski and George Sutcliffe, who met at bookbinding evening classes taught by Douglas Cockerell ...

Collecting Victorian Bestsellers: Are they ‘Dogs’ or Objects of Desire?  The October 2013 seminar in the book-collecting series organised jointly by the Institute of English Studies (London University) and the Rare Book Society will be given by Brian Lake of Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers of Great Russell Street.

The Jarndyce business was founded by Brian in 1969 and is well known for the strength and depth of its stock, reflected in an impressive series of catalogues. Recent topics have included Charles Dickens, Seventeenth, Eighteenth and especially Nineteenth-Century Books & Pamphlets, London, Women Writers, Language and Education, Economic, Social & Political History (including Philosophy), Books in Translation, Bloods and Penny Dreadfuls, Chapbooks & Broadsides, Yellowback Novels, Plays & Theatre, and Newspapers.

For more than thirty years, Michael Graves-Johnston Antiquarian & Rare Books has sourced the finest examples of books, manuscripts and photographs in the fields of Africana, Oceania and Egyptology for many important public and private collections. These include leading institutions worldwide, such as the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian, Washington DC; Northwestern University Library of Evanston, Illinois; the British Library, London; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the American University, Cairo; as well as libraries in Australia, Hawaii, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, East and South Africa and across Europe.

The December 2013 seminar in the book-collecting series organised jointly by the Institute of English Studies (London University) and the Rare Book Society will be given by Professor John Spiers, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute and a Visiting Professor at the University of Glamorgan. He is also a distinguished publisher, having founded the Harvester Press in 1969. Beyond all that, he is a very serious book-collector, especially of Victorian books.

He is the editor of Gissing and the City : Cultural Crisis and the Making of Books in Late Victorian England 2006; Serious about Series : American ‘Cheap’ Libraries, British ‘Railway’ Libraries and some Literary Series of the 1890's 2007 and The Culture of the Publisher’s Series : Authors, Publishers and the Shaping of Taste 2011 – and these titles reflect the theme of the seminar – The Obscure Origins, Wonderful Life, and Shock Death of The Railway Library in British Fiction.

Anthony Payne has worked as an auctioneer at Christie’s South Kensington and for many years was a Director of Bernard Quaritch Ltd. He is now an independent antiquarian bookseller and an Honorary Research Associate at University College London. He is on the Council of the Friends of the British Library, a Vice President of the Hakluyt Society, and a Director of Imago Mundi Ltd.  He is working on a major bibliographical study of the travel writer and editor, Richard Hakluyt, and has published articles on Hakluyt and related matters in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History and elsewhere ...