Firsts London 2026 Sees Rise in International Rare Book Buyers

Firsts: London’s Rare Book Fair at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea saw sales of more than £5m with over 4,000 visitors through the doors to browse 100 stands, many relating to this year's theme of the fair 'Revolution' to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

"We are particularly pleased to have had a lot of new visitors through the door who also bought books," said Tom Lintern-Mole, fair chairman and owner of Antiquates Ltd. "The fair was very well attended despite clashing with other art-related fairs and events. The preview night saw almost 1,000 guests attending, with a steady flow of visitors for the next three days."

President of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association Bernard Shapero, added: "We had some good sales and met new customers. It was encouraging to see so many international collectors and institutions from around the world, including the USA, Hong Kong and Bahrain. Islamic manuscripts did particularly well."

Highlights included:

• John Atkinson Fine & Rare Books sold a full set of James Bond novels with a price tag of £85,000 and also sold a first American edition of Guys and Dolls in an exceptionally rare dust wrapper with an asking price of £17,500, plus A Room with a View by E.M. Forster with an accompanying letter by Forster to his local vet (ticket price £7,500)
• Lucius Books sold The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery, unusually signed by both Montgomery and Winston Churchill during the unveiling of a statue of Montgomery, and a first edition of John Steinbeck's The Winter of our Discontent, both for five figure sums and to international visitors
• Christian White sold Richard Owen's Philosophical Transactions paper on the Archeopteryx published in 1863 for £4,000 to a US institution which had never bought from him before
• Bernard Quaritch sold an archive of legal documents tracing 400 years of English history from the foundation to the dissolution of Dieulacres Abbey in Staffordshire with an asking price of £38,000 to an international buyer
• Thomas Heneage Art Books sold a record of the systematic looting of Italy during the Napoleonic conquest, printed in Venice (1799), prior to the looting of Florence and Naples, and a pair of beautifully bound books for the new house of the 'Comte du Nord', the alias used by the future Emperor Paul I of Russia and his wife Maria Feodorovna during their extended grand tour of Europe between 1781 and 1782
• Jason Burley from Camden Lock Books sold 50% more this year in comparison to previous years, including a miniature koran
• Voewood Rare Books saw lots of interest, especially in their Editio princeps of the King James Bible
• Regular exhibitor Douglas Stewart Fine Books from Melbourne, Australia sold a couple of £20,000 books and said he was pleased with his trip to the UK

Bookvica from Tbilisi, Georgia returned to the fair for the first time since 2021 and saw good sales. Other international exhibitors included dealers from Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the USA, Serbia and Switzerland. 

Winners at Firsts London were Shapero Rare Books for Best Stand, Tom W. Ayling for Best Display, Douglas Stewart for Best Book (Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species), and Daniel Crouch Rare Books for Best Object (a pair of table globes by Blaeu).