This major three-day event is one of the highlights in the world for book lovers and collectors – and centrepiece of London Book Fair Week. In the light and airy National Hall at Olympia, you will find thousands of rare, unusual and unique items offered for sale by 180 leading UK and international dealers.

At the Fair you can view, handle and buy books, maps, prints, photographs, manuscripts, ephemera and original art work spanning the centuries, many items of museum quality. All items are freely available for inspection before purchase and in contrast to the e-book or downloaded text, here you may hold a remarkable piece of history in your hand. You can purchase a text as it first came off the printing press and bound by a craftsman hundreds of years ago – or the very latest collectable author’s first editions.

Organised by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, the fair, now in its 56th year attracts nearly 200 of the world’s best dealers offering a range of fascinating books, maps and ephemera including historical items from the early days of printing to modern first editions: a must for all lovers of history and the written word. Our exhibitors welcome you to browse (and buy!) their highlights on this website and encourage you to visit their own web-sites and to get in touch prior to the Fair. They will be happy to bring specific items for your inspection and this is an excellent opportunity to make new contacts. So whatever you are looking for, or interested in, get in touch.

Knuf Rare books is happy to invite you to visit their Stand F-11 at  Salon International du Livre Ancien au Grand Palais in Paris.

26 – 28 Avril 2013
 11h to 20h

Entrance Price : 10 €
Opening by invitation  : 25 Avril 2013

Organized by le Syndicat national de la Librairie Ancienne et Moderne

rom April 11-14,  Book lovers will find a fascinating treasure trove at the Park Avenue Armory.  Over 200 American and international dealers will exhibit at The New York Antiquarian Book Fair,  bringing a vast selection of rare books, maps, manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts and ephemera.

On Sunday, April 14 from noon to three, attendees can bring items to Discovery Day, an opportunity to get expert advice and informal appraisals.

€900

Edmund Curll (1675-1747) was a rather controversial person. According to Straus there never was a man who succeeded in irritating almost beyond endurance so many of his betters. And nothing could make him see the error of his ways: he just continued to irritate. If, for instance, objection was raised to some books of his of the bawdier kind, it would as likely as not be followed by another even more scandalously improper. If a furious author declared that a book of his, published by Curll, was wholly unauthorised, he would probably find that a second volume of his work was being advertised as corrected by the author himself. Occasionaly the bookseller went too far, and then there was trouble, sometimes wholly grotesque.  He was frequently sued for libel and variously fined and even imprisoned for printing and publishing obscene and immoral books. In November 1725 Curll was once again found guilty and announced his retreat from bookselling. His son Henry was called on to step in the breach. Henceforth, it was decided things should continue much as it had been, except for an altered initial.  That probably explains why this catalogue was printed for H. Curll rather than his father Edmund. Although officially he was retreated it was Edmund who ran the business. Straus dates this catalogue around 1726 or 1727: … must, I think, have been issued either in the summer of 1726 or in the spring of 1727  [cf. Strauss, The Unspeakable Curll & Plomer, A dictionary of the printers and booksellers]. Scarce.

The introduction states: “Dieses Bücherverzeichniss enthält gut anerkannt neuere theologische Werke, Predigten, Andachts- Erbauungs – und Gebetbücher, und Jugendschriften, duchgehends nur von katholischen Verfassern; beide letztern dürften sich vorzüglich für Christengeschenke und Preisbücher eignen, und ich könnte bei Abnahme in grösseren Anzahl etwas billigere Preise stellen…” [c.f. Gier/Janota p. 1309/1310]. 

PORCELLI, GIUSEPPE MARIA. Catalogo di libri Italiani, Latini & Greci vendibili nelle Libreria di Giuseppe Maria Porcelli, Negoziante di Libri e Stampatore della Reala Accademia Militaire…  Naples, Porcelli, 1796. 8vo. 347pp. Original gray wrappers (damaged). More or less browning and foxing throughout as is usual for books printed in Naples. €950

Large stock catalogue of this eighteenth century Naples bookseller,  arranged alphabetically. The majority of books offered here are of the eighteenth century but there are also titles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pages 329 onwards contains prospectuses for books to appear.

GRUEL, LÉON.

First edition. Brief illustrated essay on the binder Christophe Plantin. Plantin was born in France, probably in Touraine or Saint-Avertin, near the city of Tours. He learned bookbinding and bookselling in Caen. He married someone from Antwerp, and settled there in 1549 as a bookbinder. In 1555, he opened his own printing establishment and soon became a leader of that trade.

HUESO, R .F.

Describes 534 bindings. This catalogue of the loan exhibition of Spanish bindings is, with its sixty-six plates, one of the few comprehensive surveys of Spanish bindings (Breslauer, the uses of bookbinding literature p. 25).

SCHMIDT,  ADOLF.

Bucheinbände aus dem XIV-XIX Jahrhundert in der Landesbibliothek Darmstadt. Leipzig, 1921. Folio. Orig. cloth. 100 plates with 162 illustrations, all in colour. 3/4 morocco binding. €1500

Majestic book and one of the standard works on bookbinding by Adolf Schmidt, the Director of the Landesbibliothek Darmstadt. 162 bindings are illustrated and described in detail. At the time of publication the Landesbibliothek Darmstadt had, together with the Library of Dresden, the most important collection of bindings in Germany. Most of the bindings shown here are bindings from Cologne, mostly from the collection of Baron Hüpsch. And the bindings from the “Hofbuchbinderei of Kurfürst August” are from the collection of Sophie Eleonore (1609 – 1671), originally from Sachsen but married into Darmstadt. All bindings are fully described with provenance, bookbinder and arms.