Bernard Quaritch

Bernard Quaritch (no year)

Bernard Quaritch (born April 23, 1819 in Worbis , † December 17, 1899 in Hampstead ) was an English bookseller and antiquarian of German descent.

Life

Bernhard Quaritsch was born in Worbis, which at that time belonged to the Prussian province of Saxony , as the son of a Prussian military officer. He lost his father at an early age, did an apprenticeship in Wilhelm Koehne's bookstore in Nordhausen and then worked as an assistant in Carl J. Klemann's publishing house in Berlin. In 1842 he moved to London , where he found a job with one of the most important booksellers and antiquarians there, Henry George Bohn (1796–1884). In 1844 and 1845 he worked in Paris for the well-known French bookseller Théophile Barrois. Returning to London, he worked for Bohn for another two years and opened his own bookstore in Castle Street, near Leicester Square , in April 1847 with a capital of £ 10 . In the same year he also took the British citizenship. From 1848 he published his monthly Catalog of Foreign and English Books , and from around 1858 he began to buy rare books. One of his first acquisitions was a copy of the Gutenberg Bible ; no fewer than six copies of this work would pass through his hands within the next forty years.

In 1860 he moved the company headquarters to Piccadilly . In 1873 he published the Bibliotheca Xylographica, Typographica et Palaeographica , an important catalog of earlier printed works from all countries. He regularly bought at the important book auctions in Europe and America and periodically printed other book catalogs. Among these are the Supplemental Catalog (1877) as well as its huge stock catalog from 1880, which comprised over 2000 pages. His last complete camp catalog appeared in seven volumes from 1887 to 1888 under the title General Catalog of Old Books and Manuscripts (later supplements made the series grow to twelve volumes). All of these catalogs are of lasting value to the bibliographer. At the turn of the century, Quaritch was the largest antiquarian bookshop in the world.

Among the works published by Quaritch himself was Edward Fitzgerald's influential translation of the Robai'yat by Omar Chajjam . He also acted as the publications agent for the British Museum and the Society of Antiquaries of London . He died in Hampstead, London . His company, which he passed on to his son, still exists to this day.

His grandson Horace Geoffrey Quaritch Wales was an orientalist and published many of his books with Quaritch.

literature

• Henry Richard Tedder: Quaritch, Bernard . In: Dictionary of National Biography , 1901 supplement. London 1901 ( digitized version )

Web links

Commons : Bernard Quaritch  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Bernard Quaritch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Bernard Quaritch website with information on the company's history