Blackwell Rare Bookshop Associations

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ASSOCIATIONS

Blackwell Rare Books is a member of the following trade organisations:

Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA)

Founded in 1906, the ABA is the oldest professional body of its kind in the world. ABA members are bound by a Code of Good Practice to set fair prices when selling and buying, and to guarantee the accuracy of their catalogue descriptions. Benjamin Henry Blackwell, the founder of the firm, and his son Basil Blackwell, who ran it for many years, both served terms as president of the ABA. Today the ABA organises two annual fairs in London, and Blackwell Rare Books exhibits every June at the Olympia fair.

International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB)

The League of Antiquarian Booksellers was founded in 1947 at the instigation of Menno Hertzberger, a Dutch bookseller who saw an opportunity to soften the international bad feeling stemming from recent wars by finding common ground in books: hence the motto 'Love of Books Unites Us'. Twenty-two separate national organisations - increased from the founding five (Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands) - meet in annual conferences, and the organisation sponsors major book fairs in several countries. Blackwell Rare Books travels to America in order to participate in two large fairs each year, in California and New York City.

Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA)

A relatively young association, the PBFA officially began in 1974, primarily to create an opportunity for booksellers around the country to display books for sale at regular fairs in London. As it grew, further events were established around the country. It is now the largest trade organisation for secondhand and antiquarian booksellers in the world, numbering hundreds of members and organising more than one hundred fairs each year. Blackwell Rare Books exhibits at two of the organisation's premier fairs, in Oxford in January and in York in September.

For more information about each organisation, please visit their websites