ABA Past Presidents 1920-1929
Albert Isaac Myers (1865-1944) was born at Aldgate in London in 1865, the son of Moss (Morris) Myers and his wife Hannah Isaacs, who had married in 1852. His father was variously described as a general dealer or auctioneer ... Read more
Frederick William Chaundy (1921)
Frederick William Chaundy, ABA president in 1921,was born at Oxford, the eldest son of Henry Chaundy, a cabinet-maker, and his wife (1866-1949)Mary Neal Maxey, who had married in 1864. By 1881 the family were living in Observatory Street and Frederick W. Chaundy, at fourteen years of age, was already apprenticed to a local bookseller ... Read more
Percy John Dobell (1871-1956) served as president of the International Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (as the ABA was then called) in 1922. Born at Kentish Town in North London in the latter part of 1871, he was the second son of the well-known bookseller, poet and man of letters, Bertram Dobell (1842-1914), and his wife Eleanor Wymer (1847-1910), who had married in 1869 ... Read more
George Brimley Bowes (1923)
George Edmund Brimley Bowes (1874-1946) of Bowes & Bowes in Cambridge followed his father, Robert Bowes, in becoming president of the ABA. He published a paper on "Education and the Book Trade" in 1920.
H. J. Brown (1924)
H. J. Brown was ABA president in 1924.
Sir Basil Blackwell (1926)
Sir Basil Henry Blackwell (1889-1984) was the son of Benjamin Henry Blackwell, who had been ABA president in 1912. He added publishing to the Blackwell firm's bookselling activities and was also involved in the Shakespeare Head Press. He took over the business on his father's death in 1924, was ABA president shortly afterwards, as well as president of the (new) Booksellers' Association in 1934-1936. He was knighted in 1956, elected an honorary fellow of Merton College in 1959, and served as president of the Classical Association (1964-1965) and of the English Association (1969-1970). On the hundredth anniversary of the founding of B. H. Blackwell Ltd. in 1979, Oxford University made him an honorary DCL.
Edmund Hunt Dring (1927)
Edmund Hunt Dring (1863-1928) joined the celebrated Bernard Quaritch Ltd. as an assistant in 1877. He became the firm's first managing director on the death of the younger Bernard Quaritch in 1913 and remained in that position until his death in 1928. He served as president of the ABA in 1927.
The Reverend Percy Mordaunt Barnard (1868-1941), became President of the ABA in 1928. His is an unusual tale. Born at Heacham in Norfolk in 1868, he was the son of the Reverend Mordaunt Barnard, who in 1866 (at the age of seventy-one) had taken as his second wife his first cousin once removed, the thirty-two year old Adelaide Sophia Barnard ... Read more
W. J. H. Craddock (1929)
William John Henry Craddock (1870-1941) served as president of the ABA in 1929. Born in the East End of London, he was baptised on 16th Oct 1870 at St. John the Evangelist in Stepney. His father, John Henry Craddock, a printer, had married Eliza Purser in 1868, and he was their first child.