ABA Past Presidents 1930-1942
Gabriel Wells (1930)
Born in Hungary, Gabriel Wells (1862-1946) was one of the dominant bookdealers of his time, based in New York but also coming to own the Henry Sotheran business in London. He was also a prolific writer on social and economic matters, as well as producing a pamphlet on the Wise forgeries. He served as ABA president in 1930.
Hugh Hopkins (1931)
The son of a distinguished Glasgow bookseller of the same name, Hugh Hopkins was the first ABA president based in Scotland.
M. Evelyn Banks (1884-1975) became the first woman president of the ABA in 1932. Born in the City of London on 12th June 1884 and baptised as Maud Evelyn Banks at the Hawksmoor church of St. Mary Woolnoth on 9th July, she was the youngest child of John Banks, a Yorkshire-born bank-manager, and his second wife, Mary Asbridge Taylor, the daughter of a local tailor ... Read more
Ernest William Heffer (1871-1948) served as ABA president in 1933. The booksellers W. Heffer & Sons, although now reduced to a single large shop from an earlier chain, has long been a cherished Cambridge institution. It is still a very fine bookshop, now boasting a revived second-hand department, and is a testament to the occasional longevity of the book-trade, tracing its origins back to 1876 ... Read more
Dr. Frederic Sutherland Ferguson (1878-1967) joined the firm of Bernard Quaritch at the age of eighteen in 1897. He was a major contributor to Pollard and Redgrave's "A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640" (the STC), and was himself joint editor of a later edition. He also compiled "Title-Page Borders used in England & Scotland 1435-1640" (1932, with R. B. McKerrow), etc. Read more
Charles H. Barber (1935)
Charles Henry Barber of Manchester was ABA president in 1935.
John Harrison Stonehouse (1936)
John Harrison Stonehouse (1864-1937) of Sotheran's was president in 1936.
George Herbert Last of Bromley, who served as ABA President in 1937, was born at Rougham, near Bury St. Edmund’s, in Suffolk in 1877. His father, Albert Last (1842-1888), had a rural combination of occupations – gardener and part-time sub-postmaster. His mother, Sarah Lucy Carbery (1837-1928), was the London-born daughter of a lawyer’s clerk. They had married in 1863. We catch the family on the 1881 Census Return, living in Rougham – George George Herbert Last the sixth of seven children, of whom the eldest was already a postman at the age of sixteen ... Read more
Lionel Keir Robinson (1938-1942)
Lionel Keir Robinson M.C. (1897-1983) was ABA president 1938-1942