19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop Information

We offer the most important rare books, manuscripts, and photographs representing mankind’s greatest achievements. Our collection, spanning antiquity through the 21st century, includes landmark works in science, literature, Americana, exploration, economics, philosophy, and other fields of human endeavor. Books from our stock now reside in the collections of many important institutions, leading figures in science and commerce, and world leaders such as President Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mikhail Gorbachev, Yitzhak Rabin, Tony Blair, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and the Sultan of Brunei. Our books have often been purchased as state gifts by Presidents George H. W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. We have participated in exhibitions at institutions around the world including Cornell University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Shrine of the Book. In recent years we have placed with our clients a wide range of great books including the first editions of More’s Utopia, Machiavelli’s Il Principe, Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus, the King James Bible, Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, John Smith’s True Relation of Virginia, Shakespeare’s Poems and three copies of the First Folio, the Bill of Rights, several copies of The Federalist, Ricardo’s annotated copy of Malthus’s Political Economy, Poe’s annotated copies of two of his books, Hawthorne’s corrected proof sheets for The Scarlet Letter, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Einstein’s own annotated copy of the theory of special relativity.