Word: rosenbach
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seller was Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, a randy, rowdy, penguin-shaped man who was the most successful and most flamboyant rare-book dealer in history...
...ROSENBACH (616 pp.)-Edwin Wolf II, with John Fleming-World...
...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...
Baronial Branch. The fascinating tale of book collecting's great days emerges from this densely written biography by two former Rosenbach employees, and few readers will mind that the book is too long by half or that its style sometimes flutters giddily. 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...
...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...