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Dictionary of American Antiquarian Bookdealers. By Donald C. Dickinson. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. xv + 271 pp. ISBN 0-313-26675-1. Cloth $69.50
It is a truism that publishers would find it extremely difficult to exist without bookdealers. Indeed if antiquarian bookdealers were not in existence then, apart from copyright libraries, the memory of many publishers would be wiped from the face of the earth. Antiquarian bookdealers locate out-of-print books. Publishing is a particularly volatile and ephemeral profession. Many go under, sunk without trace, but their products survive and surface through the agency of antiquarian dealers. So any good record of antiquarian bookdealers is invaluable for furthering the study of the sources of publishing history and research.
The author, Donald Dickinson, was formerly Professor in the School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In addition to compiling a Dictionary of American Book Collectors, published by Greenwood in 1986, he is author of a lavishly illustrated and well documented study Henry E. Huntington's Library of Libraries (1995). Culling the back runs of that invaluable resource...