The new bibliomaniacs

In 1947, booksellers from five countries – Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden – gathered in Amsterdam ‘with the aim of establishing new hope for international peace through open markets, to foster friendship and understanding, and to counteract the animosity and suspicion engendered by the Second World War.’ A year later, at a second meeting in Copenhagen, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) was officially incorporated. Since 1953, the ILAB logo has proudly borne the motto ‘Amor Librorum Nos Unit’: the love of books unites us.

Then, in 1949, a group of fifty American booksellers met at the Grolier Club in New York City. More focused on ethics and promotion of the trade itself, they agreed to form a league of their own. Their first official meeting was held at Parke-Bernet Galleries – now Sotheby’s – and thus the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) was born.

The first American antiquarian book fair took place several years later in April 1960, with 22 dealers occupying 20 booths. Admission was free. Despite rain and storms on opening night, there were lines around the block to get in.

Now in its 66th year, the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America’s (ABAA) New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (NYIABF) was recently held at the Park Avenue Armory. And the visitors were still lining up. Guests moved through presentations from 174 exhibitors from around the world, encountering rare books, manuscripts, maps and artefacts spanning centuries. Total attendance reached 15,400 over four days, with 2,400 on opening night alone. In fact, there has been a 62 per cent growth in visitors from 2022 to 2026.

And people are buying. Reports put the value of the global rare book market at over $7 billion with an expected growth rate above 6 per cent per year.

The definition of ‘rare books’ is wide ranging. It includes ancient manuscripts, first editions, and hard-to-find autographed copies, but also much more. Ben Houston of Peter Harrington Rare Books explains, ‘The age of a book doesn’t necessarily define its rarity. There are very old books that are not terribly rare because they were printed in large numbers, and there are very new books that are rare because they were printed in small numbers. But it also comes down to desirability.’

And it’s not just books. On the opening night, Honey & Wax Booksellers sold a first edition of W. B. Yeats’s poem Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920). Imperial Fine Books sold an illustrated set of George Washington’s writings alongside a first edition of notorious Shakespeare forger-turned-historian William Henry Ireland’s Life of Napoleon accompanied by a note signed by Bonaparte himself. Christian White Rare Books sold a bound collection of Thomas Paine pamphlets from the 1790s. At Schubertiade Music & Arts, a leather jacket belonging to Frank Zappa sold within the first hour, while Peter Harrington Rare Books sold a 19th-century edition of the Magna Carta printed entirely in gold on vellum.

And that was only part of it. There were 1960s and ’70s protest posters, 15th-century maps, 1990s zines, and even an original sample tray of late 19th-century French glass eyeballs at Rootenberg Books of California. This is no longer the dusty attic of popular imagination or your grandfather’s leather-bound collection.

Increasingly, younger people – especially those under 35 – are becoming a visible part of the rare book trade. Buyers and sellers alike pointed to the same reason: growing up in the digital age has intensified the desire for analogue objects and tangible connections to the past. There is something special about holding history in your hands.

Books are not only containers of information; they exert a force of their own. Holding a map from 1482 that may have guided Columbus’s journey (Daniel Crouch Rare Books), a protest poster carried at Stonewall (Fugitive Materials), ballet shoes signed by Rudolph Nureyev (Tamino Autographs) or an early Dadaist pamphlet with lithographs by Kurt Schwitters (Sims Reed Rare Books), creates an intimacy with history that is impossible to replicate digitally.

Houston describes this as the ‘nearest thing we can get to time travel’. Rare books and objects connect collectors to the people who once handled them. That shift has also expanded interest in association copies and objects with personal histories attached to them – books annotated by authors, inscribed to collaborators, or tied to specific historical moments.

One example Peter Harrington brought to the fair was a first English edition of Waiting for Godot, inscribed by Samuel Beckett to Alan Schneider, director of the play’s first American production. Schneider later annotated the text as a working copy for the staging. For collectors, these marks of use and intimacy matter as much as rarity itself.

In addition, there is increasing interest in what Houston calls ‘How did we get here’ collecting: building collections that reflect cultural moments or trace lines of thought across time. So a collector might pair Orwell’s 1984 with 1970s countercultural ephemera not because they are bibliographically related, but because together they explain something about the present.

Collectors today are also increasingly combining books with art, archives, ephemera, and objects. Ephemera in particular – long considered secondary within the trade – has become central to understanding social and political history. That shift is reflected in dealers like Daylon Orr, founder of Fugitive Materials, whose work focuses on queer history, feminism, activism, and other materials that have historically been overlooked by the traditional rare book world.

Orr explains that many people collecting activist archives today were not part of those movements themselves, but are looking back at them as crucial moments in 20th-century history. The trade, he argues, is becoming less about prestige alone and more about historical meaning. Fugitive Materials frequently places archives with universities and museums, helping shape which histories survive and remain accessible to future researchers.

The trade itself is slowly diversifying as well. Orr notes that as libraries, museums, and institutions hire a broader range of curators and archivists, new perspectives influence what is preserved and valued. This changes not only who participates in the trade, but also what counts as cultural history worth saving.

The book trade has been arguably male dominated and there have also been notable attempts to diversify, particularly in recent decades. So much so that most of the young women at the fair said they had never experienced the rare book world as exclusively male or inaccessible.

One of the fair’s female ambassadors, for instance, is Meredith Graves, MTV correspondent and former lead singer of the punk band Perfect Pussy. Graves studies and practices occult traditions while collecting books on demonology, folklore, and magic. At the same time, she collects textile manuals, sewing patterns, and historical knitting guides. ‘I collect things I can use,’ she explains. ‘My books live. They get used… They’re living objects.’

The internet has also transformed the trade. Online marketplaces and databases allow first-time buyers to trace and research materials that once required years of accumulated expertise. Social media, meanwhile, has introduced younger audiences to books, archives, and objects they might otherwise never encounter.

So where does one start? Most enthusiasts say, begin with what interests you. Jesse Smith, daughter of the musician Patti Smith and a musician in her own right, served as the first ambassador of the Book Fair. Her collection is eclectic: Gregory Corso, Fernando Pessoa, Walt Whitman, Edward Gorey, Henry David Thoreau, Joan of Arc, nautical history, Michigan history, and especially materials connected to her mother.

‘The most important thing to remember,’ she explains, ‘is that these items aren’t really yours. You are responsible for them, for offering them care, like so many before you, and hopefully those after you’re gone.’ Antiquarian collecting, she argues, is humbling precisely because the objects will outlive us.

Some collectors have taken that devotion to extremes. The term ‘bibliomania’ was coined in 1809 by Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin in The Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness; containing some account of the History, Symptoms, and Cure of This Fatal Disease, his playful study of obsessive book collecting. Yet behind the humour lies a long history of collectors whose passion bordered on compulsion. For example, in the 1990s the book thief Stephen Blumberg famously entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. At the time of his arrest, the books he had stolen were valued at more than $20 million. Blumberg insisted he never intended to sell them; he believed he was preserving them.

And there have been others with darker stories. One of them, Don Vincente, a former Spanish monk, allegedly committed multiple murders in the 1830s in pursuit of rare books. After being outbid by a rival bookstore owner, Vincente burned the shop with the bookseller inside. He was ultimately convicted, which then led to the discovery of other stolen books and murders. ‘I am not a thief,’ he explained. When asked if he had any remorse, he supposedly responded, ‘Every man must die sooner or later, but good books must be conserved.’ He lamented only when he found out that the book for which he had killed was not in fact the only copy. Upon learning this he was said to have shouted and was still sadly murmuring at the time of his execution, ‘My copy is not unique.’

But mostly it’s still just about connection. The conversation and connections continue throughout the year with ILAB and ABAA-sponsored rare book fairs at Firsts in London, Australia in July, Germany in September, Italy in October, Austria and Spain in November and France in December.

Jesse Smith describes a special kind of love reserved for books and booksellers. But there is more to it than that: ‘Walking through the aisles, we’re collectively moved by beauty, resplendence, thoughtfulness. Detail, nuance. Slow artistry, lost and fading craft, reminded of the necessity of preserving the tangible.’