Bernard Quaritch as an antiquarian bookseller

This is a brief study of the life and work of the celebrated antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch (1819‐1899). Born in Germany and having served his apprenticeship as a bookseller there, he came to London in 1842 with a letter of introduction to John Murray. After a short period in Paris he finally settled in London in 1845, setting up his own business there in 1845. This flourished and in his Victorian heyday Quaritch had an international fame, priding himself on being bookseller to many “eminent Victorians”. In 1859 he was also first to venture to publish Edward Fitzgerald’s somewhat daring “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”. Quaritch had a firm and lasting influence on books and literature of his time. Apart from his enormous influence on private libraries he helped decisively to build up the collections of the British Museum and of the H.C. Folger Library in the USA. He illustrates how the book trade in Victorian England made its own forceful contributions to the advancement of literature, learning and libraries of all sorts.