ILAB Joins the Protest Against Amazon’s Bid to Control Top-Level Domain Names

Today, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers has joined the numerous other organizations, such as the Authors Guild or the American Association of Publishers, objecting to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN’s) plan to sell top-level domains to private companies.  Online retail giant Amazon has bid to be the exclusive custodian of .book, .author and .read domains. Read more ...

Paris 2014 - 41st ILAB Congress

The ILAB and SLAM committees are very pleased to announce that the 41st ILAB Congress will run in Paris from the 13th to 16th April, 2014, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of SLAM. The Paris Congress will immediately follow the International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Grand Palais scheduled from 10th to 13th of April 2014. We hope that the very special  program that we have planned will attract numerous visitors to Paris and we are looking forward to meeting our new colleagues and welcoming old friends.

Anne Lamort, President SLAM, Tom Congalton, President ILAB

ILAB Patrons of Honour

ILAB is very proud to present Sir David Attenborough, Barry Humphries, René Fayt, Michael Knoche, Reiner Speck, Jay and Jean Kislak and Sid Lapidus as Patrons of Honour:

"Their commitment to the preservation of printed culture makes them our clients, our audience, and our inspiration, and very often all three. The paths that they have followed and the collections that they have formed are likely to have an extraordinary influence on the understanding of human culture for future generations."

16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography

The 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography will be awarded in 2014 to one or more books about books published in any language and in any part of the world between 2009 and 2012. Publishers, librarians, collectors, antiquarian booksellers and all book lovers are very welcome to submit books to the prize until the end of April 2013 by sending a single copy to the Prize Secretary.

Support scholarship! Submit books to the most prestigious prize until April 2013!

The World’s Expert Antiquarian Booksellers - In 1 Book!

The new edition of the ILAB Directory contains all names, addresses and specialities of the ILAB dealers who are organized in 22 national associations and who are located in 32 countries all over the world. Have a look!

“Book collecting is and almost always has been a vibrant, exciting and engaging pastime"

"It’s our job to make others understand that.” An interview with ILAB President Tom Congalton about his career, his favourite books, Between the Covers, collecting, ILAB and the future of the trade. Read it!

ILAB Booksellers on Video

"A wonderful snapshot of the rich history of both the ABAA and the rare book trade" - ILAB is proud to present the video archive project by Michael Ginsberg and Taylor Bowie. Recently added: interviews with two amazing ladies: Marguerite Goldschmidt and Florence Shay.

"Out of the classroom and into the world" - ILAB Internships

ILAB has launched an internship program for young antiquarian book dealers. Alena Lavrenova, Anastasya Zhikhareva, and other young antiquarian booksellers from Russia, spent several weeks in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and the United States. Read their exciting reports and join our new Facebook Group!

The World's Best Booksellers Met in Switzerland

From 22 to 26 September the presidents of 22 national antiquarian booksellers' associations and rare book dealers from all over the world met for their 40th Congress in Lucerne. Besides the meetings and elections on Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, they climbed high mountains and dark caves and visited Switzerland's most outstanding museums and private collections. Read the online diary!

Old and Rare Books. From ILAB: the one stop FREE App for all lovers of rare books

The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB)  has launched an ILAB Moile App which is now available in the Apple Store and the Android Market. Search for “ILAB rare books” or “International League of Antiquarian Booksellers” to find the free App ready to install on your phone.

GlossaryGlossary terms

• Binder's Glue, Bleiler, Book club edition, Fraying, Limp cover, OCLC, Pirate edition, Splayed, Touch of, Verso

CataloguesBook Catalogues

• Catalogue 108 - Autographs

  

  Bookseller: Eberhard Koestler Autographen & Bücher

  Specialties: Art, Autographs, History, Literature

  [+] More

Book FairsRare Books - Next Fairs

• London Map Fair

  08 Jun 2013 - 09 Jun 2013

  

  The largest Antique Map Fair in Europe, established 1980, brings together around 40 of the leading national and international antiquarian map dealers as well as hundreds of visiting dealers,...

  [+] More

• Bloomsbury Summer Book Fair

  09 Jun 2013

  

  Dealers from the UK and abroad offer fine bindings, antiquarian, illustrated books, travel, modern firsts, children’s books, maps, prints, and ephemera.

  [+] More

BooksellersAntiquarian Booksellers

• Daniel Crouch Rare Books LLP

  

  London - UNITED KINGDOM

  Specialties: Atlases and maps, Cartography, Prints and drawings

  [+] More

Rare Book Gallery

• THE BIRDS OF AMERICA

  Audubon, John James:

  Bookseller: William Reese Company - Americana

  
  New York & Amsterdam: Printed in Holland for the Johnson Reprint Corporation and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1971-1972.. Four volumes. Limitation... More
  New York & Amsterdam: Printed in Holland for the Johnson Reprint Corporation and Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1971-1972.. Four volumes. Limitation leaf printed recto only in black, 4 general titles, 4 volume titles, 4 printed facsimiles of the original titles. 435 plates, printed in up to eight colors, after John James Audubon. Double elephant folio. Original brown half calf over green cloth-covered boards, upper covers with inset brown in calf panel lettered in gilt with author and title, the flat spines lettered in gilt with author, title and volume number. Leather somewhat scuffed, internally fine. The "Amsterdam Audubon" was limited to only 250 copies. A viable alternative to the original Havell edition, and one of only two full-size facsimile editions of the complete work ever published. In October 1971, employing the most faithful printing method available, the best materials and the ablest craftsmen of their age, the Amsterdam firm of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., in conjunction with the Johnson Reprint Corporation of New York, set out to produce the finest possible limited edition facsimile of the greatest bird book ever printed: the Havell edition of John James Audubon's well-loved BIRDS OF AMERICA. The Teyler Museum in Haarlem, Holland made their copy of the original work available for use as a model. The Museum had bought their copy through Audubon's son as part of the original subscription in 1839. After long deliberation, the extremely complex but highly accurate process of color photo-lithography was chosen as the most appropriate printing method. The best exponents of this art were the renowned Dutch printing firm of NV Fotolitho Inrichting Drommel at Zandvoort who were willing to undertake the task of printing each plate in up to eight different colors. The original Havell edition was published on handmade rag paper and the publishers were determined that the paper of their edition should match the original. Unhappy with the commercially available papers, they turned to the traditional paper manufacturers G. Schut & Zonen (founded in 1625), who, using 100% unbleached cotton rags, were able to produce a wove paper of the highest quality, with each sheet bearing a watermark unique to the edition: G. Schut & Zonen [JR monogram] Audubon [OT monogram]. The publishers and their dedicated team completed their task late in 1972 and the results of these labors became known as the "Amsterdam Audubon." 250 copies were published and sold by subscription, with the plates available bound or unbound. Given all this careful preparation, it is not surprising that the prints have the look and feel of the original Havell edition. The Havell edition was expensive at the time of publication and this has not changed. The last complete copy to appear on the market sold for more than $10,000,000 in London in 2010, and the increasingly rare individual plates from this edition, when they do appear, generally sell for between $2,500 and $150,000 depending on the image. The quality of the Amsterdam Audubon plates is apparent to any discerning collector and it is becoming ever clearer that they offer the most attractive alternative to the Havell edition plates, given the latter's spiraling prices. The idea for his great work came to Audubon after his meeting with the distinguished ornithologist Alexander Wilson at Louisville in 1810, but it was not until 1826 that he felt ready to set sail for England in search of a publisher. In the intervening sixteen years he had time both to perfect his style of drawing from specimens mounted on wires as an aid to composition, to assemble a remarkable portfolio of drawings, and, perhaps most importantly, to develop the single-minded determination that was to be so essential in his efforts to realize his ambition. John James Audubon, the illegitimate son of French sea captain Jean Audubon and Mlle Jeannne Rabin, his Creole mistress, was born in Les Cayes, Santo Domingo on April 26, 1785. His mother died soon after his birth and in 1791, Audubon was brought back to France to live at Nantes under the care of his father's wife, Anne Moynet. The arrangement was evidently a happy one, and both Audubon and his half-sister (Jean's illegitimate daughter by another mistress) were legally adopted in 1794. Audubon later wrote that he quickly came to both love and admire his adopted mother, though her indulgence of his preference for exploring the surrounding countryside to attending to his schoolwork, was perhaps largely responsible for his lack of formal education. Audubon's first arrival in America was in 1803, when, following the loss of the family's fortune in Santo Domingo, his father dispatched him to eastern Pennsylvania. He was to stay with a Quaker lawyer, Miers Fisher, who had been acting as Audubon senior's business agent, and represent the family's interests in the development of the lead deposits which had been found on Mill Grove (a farm near Philadelphia, which had been bought, sight unseen, by Audubon's father). It was here that his early interest in drawing bird specimens grew, and here that he met and married (in 1808) Lucy Bakewell, the daughter of a neighbor. They set up home firstly in Louisville, and later Henderson, Kentucky. The new species of birds to be found in the virgin wilderness of Kentucky supplied Audubon with a large number of subjects to both draw and hunt, and allowed him to develop the lifelike action-packed ornithological images that were to become the hallmark of his work. Following his bankruptcy in 1820, Audubon decided to concentrate on his painting, and he set out for Louisiana with the intention of adding to the tally of species captured in his portfolio. During this period he worked as a traveling artist and drawing instructor, drawing birds from Mississippi as well as Louisiana and eventually settling with Lucy near New Orleans at a plantation called Bayou Sara. By 1824 Audubon's plans for THE BIRDS OF AMERICA were coalescing. The work was to be issued in eighty parts of five plates per part, for a total of 400 plates (this was finally expanded to 435 showing some 1,065 different species in eighty-seven parts) on large format paper: this was dictated by Audubon's determination that all the known species were to be shown, and that they should all be life-size. After unsuccessful attempts to get the work published in both Philadelphia and New York, in became clear that the only hope of publication lay in Europe, and Audubon sailed for England in 1826. In England Audubon arranged a number of successful exhibitions of his drawings, where the "dramatic impact of his ambitious, complex pictures and a romantic image as 'the American woodsman' secured Audubon entry into a scientific community much preoccupied with little-known lands." Amongst the friends he made from this community, were William Swainson, a gifted ornithologist, who taught Audubon the niceties of technical ornithology, William MacGillivray, a brilliant Scottish naturalist-anatomist, who, later, was to contribute to and edit Audubon's ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY, and Patrick Neill, printer and zoologist, who recommended William Home Lizars of Edinburgh as an engraver who would do justice to Audubon's work. Lizars was so impressed with Audubon's work that he agreed to put aside the work he was doing for Prideaux John Selby and Sir William Jardine, Britain's foremost ornithologists of the time, and concentrate on the engraving and printing of Audubon's subjects. Lizars' involvement in the project began in 1827, but turned out to be short-lived: after producing only ten plates, all of which are represented in the present selection, Lizars' colorists went on strike and Audubon was forced to find another engraver. This setback proved to be only temporary, however, and Audubon quickly established an excellent working and personal relationship with both Robert Havell, senior, and his son, Robert Havell, junior. Havell senior died in 1832, but between 1828 and 1838 Havell junior was involved as engraver (or in the case of the Havell plates as re-toucher) of all 425 of the images that go to make up the highest achievement of ornithological art and the greatest of all bird books. Less
  
  

  Buy from:	abaa.org Biblio

  Price: 80000.00 USD

• AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS

  SMITH, Adam

  Bookseller: Charles Agvent

  
  London W. Strahan & T. Cadell 1778 Two large quarto volumes (8.5" x 10.6875"); [8], 510; [8], 589, [1] pages. Complete with half-title in... More
  London W. Strahan & T. Cadell 1778 Two large quarto volumes (8.5" x 10.6875"); [8], 510; [8], 589, [1] pages. Complete with half-title in Volume II (no half-title called for in Volume I). Contemporary calf, rebacked, with original gilt spines and morocco labels laid down. Corners renewed. First published in 1776, this Second Edition is scarcer than the first with only 500 copies printed and is the only other edition published in quarto format. "The second edition exhibits a number of alterations large and small, some providing new information, some correcting matters of fact, some perfecting the idiom, and a large number now documenting references in footnotes" (William B. Todd, in the 1976 Oxford edition of THE WEALTH OF NATIONS). Adam Smith (1723-1790) spent ten years in the writing and perfecting of THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. The book succeeded at once, and the first edition was exhausted in six months. Goldsmith 11663; Grolier, 100 English, 57; KressB 154; PRINTING AND THE MIND OF MAN 221: "The certainty of its criticism and its grasp of human nature have made it the first and greatest classic of modern economic thought." Armorial bookplate of Gorham Parsons on the front pastedown of each volume. Some foxing and browning, heavier in the first volume which has the front free endpaper and the title strengthened at inner and outer margins. Occasional slight offsetting to the text in the second volume which has the final gathering strengthened in the gutter. Very Good set in a contemporary binding Less
  
  

  Buy from:	Direct From Bookseller

  Price: 75000.00 USD

• Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise and Ptilonorhynchidae,...

  SHARPE, Richard Bowdler (1847-1909)

  Bookseller: Donald Heald Rare Books

  
  London: Taylor & Francis for Henry Sotheran & Co, 1891-98. 2 volumes in 8 original parts, large folio. (22 3/16 x 15 1/16 inches). Smaller... More
  London: Taylor & Francis for Henry Sotheran & Co, 1891-98. 2 volumes in 8 original parts, large folio. (22 3/16 x 15 1/16 inches). Smaller format letterpress "Notice to Subscribers" tipped in at front of part VI, smaller format "Completion of the work" notice from the publishers tipped in at front of part VIII. 79 fine hand-coloured lithographic plates by William Mathew Hart, after his own drawings (52) and John Gould (20) or John Gerrard Keulemans (7), 13 uncoloured illustrations. Original pictorial grey paper-covered boards, dark blue cloth spines, the upper cover of each part with the letterpress title beneath a large wood-engraved title vignette, the eight parts contained in two dark green morocco-backed cloth boxes, the spines in six compartments with raised bands, lettered in the second and third compartments, the others with repeat decoration in gilt made up from various small tools. A very fine copy of this, the first monograph devoted to these remarkable birds and the "last of the fine bird books" (Fine Bird Books p.107). This copy, in original parts, with the best colouring of any copy that we have handled in past forty years. The remarkable-looking Birds of Paradise have captivated western science since Magellan first brought back a skin of such a creature in 1522. The skins, highly prized by East Indian natives, was given by the ruler of Batchian (in the Mollucas) as a gift to the King of Spain. The legs and wings of the bird, however, had been removed when skinned, presumably to better show its impressive plumage. When asked why the bird had no wings or feet, the natives replied that none were needed as the bird simply floated in its heavenly paradise. Thus, the earliest descriptions of the species, and indeed even its scientific naming by Linnaeus in the 18th century as Paradisaea apoda (legless bird of paradise), perpetuated that myth. Due to the remote nature of their rain forest habitat in New Guinea, it was not until the mid-19th century that these remarkable birds were first scientifically observed and accurately described. Gould had intended to publish a the first monograph devoted to the birds of paradise following completion of his Birds of New Guinea, but he did not live to do so. When Sharpe took over the task of completing that work, he appealed for subscribers for the proposed monograph. The response was clearly enthusiastic as within three years the first part of the present work was published. Some of the plates had previously appeared in Gould's Birds of New Guinea as "Messrs. Sotheran purchased the stock of Gould's works after his death [and] acquired the stones with which he had intended to illustrate his Monograph... Many of them were broken or otherwise damaged, and of these some have been redrawn or replaced by new plates by Mr. Hart. Since Gould's time, however, many marvelous new species have been discovered, and these have been described and figured in the present work" (Appendix). As the small format slip in part six makes clear, the timing of the publication of the work could not have been better, as so many beautiful new species were discovered whilst the work was in preparation that Sharpe felt justified in extending the size of the work from six to eight parts. Copies of this work were issued at a later date with inferior hand-colouring. The quality of the colouring of the plates in the present copy is outstanding, and it is only with examples of this work in the original parts that the colouring can be guaranteed to be contemporary with the original publication dates. Copies such as the present example are very rare: only three are listed as having sold at auction in the past thirty years. Fine Bird Books (1990) p.107; Nissen IVB 581; Ripley 263; Wood, p.565; Zimmer, p.581. Less
  
  

  Buy from:	Biblio

  Price: 95000.00 USD

• Varia Opera Mathematica...accesserunt selectae quaedam eiusdem Epistolae, vel...

  FERMAT, Pierre de

  Bookseller: Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc.

  
  Woodcut vignette on title, two engraved headpieces, five folding engraved plates, & woodcut diagrams in the text. 6 p.l., 210, [3] pp. Folio,... More
  Woodcut vignette on title, two engraved headpieces, five folding engraved plates, & woodcut diagrams in the text. 6 p.l., 210, [3] pp. Folio, early 19th-cent. half red morocco & red boards (minor browning), flat spine gilt. Toulouse: J. Pech, 1679. First edition, and now rare on the market; this copy belonged to Dominique Fran?s Jean Arago (1786-1853), the great French scientist who made important contributions to astronomy, electro-magnetism, and optics (see D.S.B., I, pp. 200-03). This book, Fermat's only substantial publication apart from his edition of Diophantus (both prepared and published posthumously by his son), contains the majority of Fermat's mathematical work. Included are Fermat's important researches on analytic geometry, developed concurrently with, but independently of, Descartes, as well as his method of maxima and minima, based upon which some have proclaimed Fermat the true first discoverer of the differential calculus. It also includes the first printing of Fermat's important correspondence with Pascal which founded the modern theory of probability. There is also correspondence with other contemporary mathematicians, including Mersenne, Roberval, Wallis, Digby, and Gassendi. Although Fermat published practically nothing during his lifetime, his work was freely communicated to others in correspondence and was profoundly influential. Descartes and Pascal notwithstanding, many scholars regard Fermat as the greatest of all 17th-century French mathematicians. Fermat (1601-65), was shy of publicity and reluctant to communicate his findings. As a result, his discoveries remained comparatively unappreciated until the 19th century when they catalyzed the development of modern algebra. The title-page is in Horblit's second state (no preference), while leaves a2 and e2 are in his first state (no preference). The rare portrait of Fermat, not present here, was also not found in the Horblit, Honeyman, or Norman copies. A small minority of copies have the portrait; it was printed in a much larger format than the book and was probably intended only for large paper copies, of which a few survive (e.g. one of the two BL copies). A very good and crisp copy. With the signature of Arago on the title-page (his sale, Paris, 1854, lot 824 "in-f. dem. m. r.") and with a slightly later note of an English collector "From the Library of F. Arago, H.S." ❧ Dibner, Heralds of Science, 108-"The above, published after his death, first presented his work and correspondence." En Fran?s dans le Texte 115. Evans, Exhibition of First Editions of Epochal Achievements in the History of Science (1934), 6. Horblit 30-"Fermat is considered the father of the modern theory of numbers, and herald of differential calculus and analytical geometry." . Less
  
  

  Buy from:	Biblio

  Price: 150000.00 USD