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The new bibliomaniacs

May 28, 2026

Kristine Roome

Themes: Books, Culture, History

Rare book collecting is booming as young people raised in the digital age seek tangible connections to the past.

A man searches for a book outside a shop in Cecil Court. Credit: Ruby / Alamy

In 1947, booksellers from five countries – Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden – gathered in Amsterdam ‘with the aim of establishing new hope for international peace through open markets, to foster friendship and understanding, and to counteract the animosity and suspicion engendered by the Second World War.’ A year later, at a second meeting in Copenhagen, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) was officially incorporated. Since 1953, the ILAB logo has proudly borne the motto ‘Amor Librorum Nos Unit’: the love of books unites us.

Then, in 1949, a group of fifty American booksellers met at the Grolier Club in New York City. More focused on ethics and promotion of the trade itself, they agreed to form a league of their own. Their first official meeting was held at Parke-Bernet Galleries – now Sotheby’s – and thus the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) was born.

The first American antiquarian book fair took place several years later in April 1960, with 22 dealers occupying 20 booths. Admission was free. Despite rain and storms on opening night, there were lines around the block to get in.

Now in its 66th year, the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America’s (ABAA) New York International Antiquarian Book Fair (NYIABF) was recently held at the Park Avenue Armory. And the visitors were still lining up. Guests moved through presentations from 174 exhibitors from around the world, encountering rare books, manuscripts, maps and artefacts spanning centuries. Total attendance reached 15,400 over four days, with 2,400 on opening night alone. In fact, there has been a 62 per cent growth in visitors from 2022 to 2026.

And people are buying. Reports put the value of the global rare book market at over $7 billion with an expected growth rate above 6 per cent per year.

The definition of ‘rare books’ is wide ranging. It includes ancient manuscripts, first editions, and hard-to-find autographed copies, but also much more. Ben Houston of Peter Harrington Rare Books explains, ‘The age of a book doesn’t necessarily define its rarity. There are very old books that are not terribly rare because they were printed in large numbers, and there are very new books that are rare because they were printed in small numbers. But it also comes down to desirability.’

And it’s not just books. On the opening night, Honey & Wax Booksellers sold a first edition of W. B. Yeats’s poem Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920). Imperial Fine Books sold an illustrated set of George Washington’s writings alongside a first edition of notorious Shakespeare forger-turned-historian William Henry Ireland’s Life of Napoleon accompanied by a note signed by Bonaparte himself. Christian White Rare Books sold a bound collection of Thomas Paine pamphlets from the 1790s. At Schubertiade Music & Arts, a leather jacket belonging to Frank Zappa sold within the first hour, while Peter Harrington Rare Books sold a 19th-century edition of the Magna Carta printed entirely in gold on vellum.

And that was only part of it. There were 1960s and ’70s protest posters, 15th-century maps, 1990s zines, and even an original sample tray of late 19th-century French glass eyeballs at Rootenberg Books of California. This is no longer the dusty attic of popular imagination or your grandfather’s leather-bound collection.

Increasingly, younger people – especially those under 35 – are becoming a visible part of the rare book trade. Buyers and sellers alike pointed to the same reason: growing up in the digital age has intensified the desire for analogue objects and tangible connections to the past. There is something special about holding history in your hands.

Books are not only containers of information; they exert a force of their own. Holding a map from 1482 that may have guided Columbus’s journey (Daniel Crouch Rare Books), a protest poster carried at Stonewall (Fugitive Materials), ballet shoes signed by Rudolph Nureyev (Tamino Autographs) or an early Dadaist pamphlet with lithographs by Kurt Schwitters (Sims Reed Rare Books), creates an intimacy with history that is impossible to replicate digitally.

Houston describes this as the ‘nearest thing we can get to time travel’. Rare books and objects connect collectors to the people who once handled them. That shift has also expanded interest in association copies and objects with personal histories attached to them – books annotated by authors, inscribed to collaborators, or tied to specific historical moments.

One example Peter Harrington brought to the fair was a first English edition of Waiting for Godot, inscribed by...