A. S. W. Rosenbach: Dealer and Collector George R. Bodmer* (bio) Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach (1876–1952) of Philadelphia was one of the most outstanding and famous of American booksellers in the first half of our century. He helped to make the trade in rare books what it is today, flamboyantly bidding on treasures around the world, sometimes driving up the price to prove the value of books as investments for his clients, helping to build the collections of Widener, J. P. Morgan, Folger, Huntington, Houghton, Rosenwald, and using the allure of Gutenberg Bibles and Shakespeare folios to build his own reputation. At a time when the most sought after books were European, Rosenbach worked to increase interest in American writers and manuscripts. Furthermore, he bought and sold some of the most famous literary manuscripts, including part of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures under Ground, and James Joyce’s handwritten Ulysses (which he kept). But he was also a book lover who valued his volumes and manuscripts. Though many of the people he sold books to amassed collections that became the hearts of America’s great research libraries, he saw his own role as keeping great books moving, increasing their value, getting them the care and preservation they deserved, and putting them in the hands of those who would most appreciate them. Certainly not everyone could afford the premium prices paid by his rich clients, and so he often suggested undervalued areas of book collecting, for example, children’s books. In Books and Bidders (1927), Rosenbach tells of his first foray into book-collecting at the age of eleven, bidding twenty-four dollars at a book auction for an illustrated Reynard the Fox; he didn’t have the money but was able to work out a deal as the nephew of bookseller Moses Pollack. Uncle Moses also collected children’s books and willed his accumulations to Rosenbach, who built the collection to 816 American children’s books dating from 1682 to 1836. Rosenbach eventually donated the collection to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1947, where it formed the beginning of their collection of early American [End Page 277] children’s books. In addition, his final residence in Philadelphia serves as the location for the Philip H. and A. S. W. Rosenbach Museum and Library, housing a number of important books, including many prominent Alice volumes, the Ulysses manuscript, and manuscripts of contemporary artist Maurice Sendak. According to his biographer Edwin Wolf II, Rosenbach’s first relative to come to America was the merchant Aaron Levy, who emigrated from Amsterdam just before the Revolution (14). There were seven children in the Rosenbach family, and the youngest, Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach, named for an uncle, was born in 1876. Bookish and pampered, he prepared for an academic career, earning a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1901, writing a dissertation on “The influence of Spanish literature in the Elizabethan and Stuart drama” (Wolf, Rosenbach 39), and even presenting a paper to the Modern Language Association conference. However, due to ill health and finances, he was pulled into business to support the family and formed The Rosenbach Company in 1903 with his older brother Philip (1863–1953). He wrote: I felt a renegade. I had deserted the halls of learning for the bookshop; I had given up my fellowship to enter a business that would, perhaps, put money in my purse. I did not, when at college, appreciate what a high adventure the business was to prove, the excitement and anxiety of the chase, and that I had a better chance, a far greater opportunity, to unearth unpublished documents, and uncover original source-material, than ever I could have as an instructor in English in some university. (Books and Bidders 260) Originally the brothers sold books, frames, and inexpensive prints, and this expanded to Philip’s handling furnishings and European furniture, while Dr. Rosenbach sold rare books. In lavish offices in Philadelphia and New York City and in his comfortable house in Philadelphia, Dr. Rosenbach held court, smoking cigars, serving whisky even during Prohibition, courting his clients, and searching for the authentic and elusive rare...
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Jan 1, 2002
M Thomas Inge 
Open Access