Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach was an American antique and rare book dealer. Together with his brother and business partner Philip Hyman Rosenbach they established the Rosenbach Company and Rosenbach Museum & Library.
Background
Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach was born in Philadelphia. His father, Morris (who changed his name from Meier), emigrated from Germany in 1844; their mother, Isabella Polock Rosenbach, was a native Philadelphian. The family belonged to a Sephardic Jewish congregation.
Education
Rosenbach graduated with the B. S. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1898 and had received the Ph. D. in English there in 1901
Career
His brother, Philip, established a gift shop which was expanded into a large antiques business, with stores and warehouses in Philadelphia and New York. This was the beginning of the Rosenbach Company; the antiques were liquidated at auction in 1942. In 1903 after his studies, Abraham joined his brother. The firm then began selling rare books, a business that brought the Rosenbachs to prominence.
Abraham's rare book dealings were responsible for establishing the reputation and fortune of the Rosenbach Company. From the beginning, Rosenbach's success was based on his ability to make his customers his friends, his flair for and love of publicity, and his advantageous private purchases of individual items and whole libraries, frequently with the financial backing of friendly collectors. He had a steadfast belief in the enduring value of rare books and manuscripts, and the salesmanship to convince collectors to buy them even at exalted or "Rosenbach" prices. The Widener family was the first to come under his spell. The collection of Harry E. Widener, vastly increased by his mother and grandfather after his death in 1912, is now at the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard. The eighteenth-century French books and drawings at the National Gallery of Art were bought from Rosenbach by Joseph E. Widener in the 1920's. After the death of the dealer George D. Smith in 1920, Dr. Rosenbach represented Henry E. Huntington at auctions, notably the Britwell sales at Sotheby's in 1920-1925, and in addition sold him quantities of books and manuscripts that included what are now some of the most valuable holdings of the Huntington Library. At the same time he was aiding Henry C. Folger in forming the incomparable collection that became the Folger Shakespeare Library.
He was also the main source of the books and manuscripts gathered by Carl H. Pforzheimer, now the resources of a scholarly foundation. One of the Doctor's close friends, long-time customer and financial backer William M. Elkins left his books to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Yale University, the New York Public Library, and the Library of Congress were the recipients of manuscripts and books that Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Harkness bought from Rosenbach. The last great collection amassed under his guidance was that given by Lessing J. Rosenwald to the Library of Congress.
Many other collectors, whose books never went en bloc to institutions, also were charmed by the combination of Dr. Rosenbach's knowledge and his whiskey-enhanced enthusiasm. Beverly Chew, John L. Clawson, Herschel V. Jones, and A. Edward Newton were among his early friends and customers. During his middle years William A. Clark, Frank B. Bemis, John W. Garrett, John H. Scheide, and Owen Young were attracted to the man and his books. Toward the end of his career Frank J. Hogan, Mrs. Edward L. Doheny, Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. , and Donald Hyde came into his bibliophilic orbit. All of them were entertained convivially at the successive Rosenbach residences-cum-bookstores in New York, at their Philadelphia headquarters--complete with kitchens, at the brothers' museumlike house on DeLancey Place in Philadelphia, and the Doctor's palatial fisherman's cottage at Corson's Inlet on the New Jersey shore.
They were occasionally joined by Abraham's librarian friends Belle da Costa Greene of the Morgan Library, Wilberforce Eames of the New York Public Library, Clarence S. Brigham of the American Antiquarian Society, and Lawrence C. Wroth of the John Carter Brown Library. Both liquor and conversation always flowed freely. International fame came to Abraham Rosenbach when he bought many world-renowned books and manuscripts at record prices and in the glare of publicity. He handled more Shakespeare First Folios than any other dealer, beginning with the Van Antwerp copy, which he bought in 1907. He got his first Gutenberg Bible at the auction of Robert Hoe's collection in 1911 for $27, 500; a second copy, in a contemporary binding by Fogel, came with the privately purchased library of James W. Ellsworth. The Carysfort copy, bought in London for $8, 500 in 1923, was followed by the last, from Melk Abbey, which created a sensation when Rosenbach bid $106, 000 for it in 1926. Documents by Button Gwinnett, the elusive signer of the Declaration of Independence, were sold to Rosenbach at auction--five within a year and a half, for one of which he paid $51, 000 in 1926. None of his other triumphs aroused such popular interest as his winning bid of $15, 400 in 1928 for the original manuscript of Lewis Carroll's first version of Alice in Wonderland.
In 1947 he purchased the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in British America, after a stirring auction duel. He paid $151, 000, the highest price paid until then for any book at public sale. Far more lucrative than auction purchases were the private acquisitions. Through his friendship with Clarence S. Bement and George C. Thomas, he was permitted early in his career to make commission sales of books from their libraries. William A. White and his heirs later gave him access to White's superb collection of Elizabethan rarities and books and drawings by William Blake. After 1936 the books of Frank B. Bemis became available to him, and in the late 1940's he sold items from the collection of Charles W. Clark. By borrowing from friends Dr. Rosenbach purchased outright a number of important libraries: in 1915, Harry B. Smith's "Sentimental Library, " rich in association copies, manuscripts, and letters of nineteenth-century authors; in 1920, the collection of Robert Schuhmann and in 1923, that of Louis Olry-Roederer, the first two major collections of eighteenth-century French drawings, illustrated books, and bindings to come to America; in 1919, the extensive Shakespeare library of Marsden J. Perry; in 1929, the autographs of William K. Bixby and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books of the duke of Westminster; and in 1939, the great Americana collection of Herschel V. Jones.
With amazing virtuosity Dr. Rosenbach soon recovered the cost of these major purchases, repaid the loans, and looked happily on an ever-increasing stock of "cost-free" books, some of which he kept for his private collection. Rosenbach had a nose for the unappreciated. He was one of the first to hail Herman Melville, long in limbo; his Introduction to Moby Dick was published privately in 1923. That year he made what was possibly his best buy: the original manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses for $1, 950 at the Quinn sale. His collection of early American children's books, based on a nucleus inherited from his antiquarian bookseller uncle, Moses Polock, was a pioneer in the field; and the impressive 1933 catalog of it is still a standard reference work.
He gave the collection to the Free Library of Philadelphia, of which he was a long-time trustee. His unique collection of early American Judaica, the basis of his 1927 bibliography, went to the American Jewish Historical Society, of which he was president for many years. Two coups are notable in his career. In 1925, for $110, 000, he secretly bought from Sir George Holford about 100 of the finest volumes in his inherited collection. Among them were a fabulous Shakespeare rarity, the second (1594) edition of Venus and Adonis; the finest set in existence of the four Shakespeare Folios; Edward IV's copy of a book printed by William Caxton in 1483; first editions of Homer and Dante; and a presentation copy of John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia. In 1930, also clandestinely, he secured from York Minster several of its most valuable Caxtons; Erasmus' version of the New Testament printed on vellum and known as "the Book Lions of York"; John Eliot's Indian Bible in its original New England binding; and many other items. After World War II Dr. Rosenbach's health began to fail, and Philip took over the total management of even the book business. Few purchases were made, sales at vastly reduced prices were ordered, and most collectors saw little of the Doctor. He died in Philadelphia.
Before his death the brothers had set up the Philip H. and A. S. W. Rosenbach Foundation, establishing their Philadelphia townhouse at 2010 DeLancey Place as a library and museum for the books, fine furniture, objets d'art, paintings, and drawings that perpetuate their grand and florid style. The Doctor's own collection of rare books, increased by selected unsold pieces remaining in the stock of the Rosenbach Company, forms the gemlike rare book library.