Bernard Quaritch

Bernard Alexander Christian Quaritch (/ˈkwɒrɪtʃ/ KWORR-itch; April 23, 1819 – December 17, 1899) was a German-born British bookseller and collector.

[3][a] In 1847 he started a bookseller's business off Leicester Square,[4] becoming naturalized as a British subject.

About 1858 he began to purchase rare books, one of the earliest of such purchases being a copy of the Mazarin Bible (usually known as the Gutenberg Bible), and within a period of forty years he possessed six separate copies of this rare and valuable edition.

In 1873 he published the Bibliotheca Xylographica, Typographica et Palaeographica, a remarkable catalogue of early productions of the printing press of all countries.

By this time Quaritch had developed the largest trade in old books in the world.