book collector

One of the leading twentieth-century British book collectors, Major John Abbey (1894-1969), is celebrated in an exhibition at Horsham Museum, West Sussex, England, which looks at his collecting life. (And yes, it is still currently open to visitors.)

Dyslexic and a poor writer, Abbey was interested in the book as physical object, its

Dallas – An array of extraordinary rare documents is headed to the auction block when Heritage Auctions presents The Maurice Car Collection of Arts and Sciences, Featuring Rare Books & Manuscripts Sept. 4 in New York.

Car (1908-68) was an engineer who was a dedicated

Falls Church, VA – On Thursday, June 6, Waverly Rare Books, a division of Quinn’s Auction Galleries, will conduct a 286-lot auction brimming with scarce and significant examples of science fiction and fantasy. The majority of the sale features items from the collection of Daniel “Dan” Breen, a lifelong collector of rare

Part II of the sale of world traveler, adventurer, and book collector Steve Fossett's library gets underway in Chicago on March 15. A peruse through the catalogue makes clear just how many volumes in the "Adventure & Exploration"

Sometimes a book is as much about its provenance as the item itself. For example, this eighteenth-century encyclopedia of China, finely illustrated by the Osaka artist Tachibana Morikuni owes much of its interest to the fact that it came from the collection of James E. Fagan.

"A rather scarce little book, in fine condition with the map," was how Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then governor of New York, described--and inscribed on the book's pastedown--his first edition of William H. Colyer's Sketches of the North River (1838), alongside his name and "Executive Mansion, 1930."

The first of two auctions by PBA Galleries of Richard Beagle’s Collection of Angling and Sporting Books, on June 1, 2017, featured rare and important works on fishing, plus scarce accounts of big game hunting and adventures in the wild.  The books were gathered over multiple decades by Mr. Beagle, who began collecting sporting books in the early 1960’s, frequenting the many used book stores in

It might be hard to square Rambo with rare books, but then again, people can surprise you. It turns out that actor and director Sylvester Stallone, best known for his beefy roles in Rocky and Rambo, amassed a private library of roughly 1,000 volumes, which will be offered in 40+ lots at Heritage Auctions in New York on March 8.

James Gannon, Heritage

The Jay I. Kislak Foundation announced this week a major donation to the University of Miami and Miami Dade College. Split between the two institutions is a collection that "includes some of the most important original source materials related to the history of the early Americas," according to a jointly issued press statement.