Hardcover Book

ROSENBACH, A. S. W.

BOOKS AND BIDDERS THE ADVENTURES OF A BIBLIOPHILE.

Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1927. Second printing. xv, 311 pp. Illus. Plus 78 plates, many from photographs. Index. Gilt cloth. Large 8vo.

This is more a Reader's copy. It is tightly bound, no markings, but does have some evidence of old damp at bottom of covers and pages. Some damp staining on back cover, Pages are mostly clean but some of that brownish tints at lower margins of pages.

Great photos photographs from rare collectible books like a 15th century block book leaf, a chaucer manuscript in original binding, engraved title page of Capt John Smith History of Virginia, daumier drawing don quixote, first map of new york city engfraved in america, and much more

Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, a randy, rowdy, penguin-shaped man who was the most successful and most flamboyant rare book dealer in history.

Private book collecting in the U.S. reached its peak in the '20s, before its frenzy was cooled by taxes, the Depression and the increasing rarity of first-rate items outside institutional libraries. During that time it was customary for the great auction houses to announce after important sales that "unless otherwise noted, all books were bought by Dr. Rosenbach." The coolness with which the Philadelphia dealer, by an inclination of his head, would top a bid by £500 caught the public's fancy, and Dr. R. knew how to keep publicity afloat. Solemnly he advertised: "Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, 1609; First Edition; $12,500. No family can be happy without one."

Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach was born in 1876, and sniffed book dust from childhood; his uncle Moses Polock was an early collector of Americana, and a bookseller who loved books too much to sell them. At the University of Pennsylvania young Rosenbach slighted his courses but stored up an amazing knowledge of books and their contents. While working for his Ph.D.—later he sported his doctorate and his pince-nez to much the same effect—he set out to compile nothing less than a comprehensive bibliography of English literature.

But hard scholarship palled; Rosenbach was better suited to hard selling. He learned quickly that a book was worth what someone would pay for it, and he became adept at nurturing the gluttony of those who could pay. An early client was a rich young Philadelphian named Harry Widener, who went down with the Titanic; his collection became the nucleus of Harvard's Widener Library. The doctor's Philadelphia shop was hardly grand enough for his new trade, and he opened a New York branch in a baronial town house on Madison Avenue. His hospitality was lavish; during Prohibition he entertained guests with the best whisky procurable and, frequently, with women of the same description

This book is Rosenbach's memoirs of all things book collecting, or ephemera, whether they be letters of George Washington or Edgar Allen Poe

How he bought the books, how he priced them, his clients, great book collector and dealer gossip from the Roaring Twenties!

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