ABOUT JONATHAN KEARNS RARE BOOKS & CURIOSITIES

Jonathan Kearns Rare Books

Jonathan Kearns grew up in a bewildering number of locations including RAF stations, campsites, boats, barns, mouldering Victorian mansions, tiny mountain top cottages, and on one notable occasion, a castle. The common thread linking these places was always enormous teetering piles of books; sometimes on shelves, more often in stacks of boxes, or great haphazard heaps on the floor.

He has been working in the London rare book world for 25 years, beginning on the Charing Cross Road, and then progressing happily through a series of notable names in the trade until spending over a decade working for Adrian Harrington Rare Books. He has been an independent bookseller since the end of 2014, issuing catalogues and lists, exhibiting internationally at a number of book-fairs and generally trying to see, touch, explore, research, catalogue, and pass on as many books, archives, journals, letters, and notable examples of the printed word as is humanly possible.

Jonathan has sought out and handled as much of everything as he can; large collections of weird fiction, Shakespeare folios, highlights of science and natural history, Jane Austen association copies, rarities of the mystery and detective genre, travel manuscripts, Beat and Counter Culture material, erotica, primary source military material, Gothics, Penny Dreadfuls, execution broadsides, occult and esoterica, and a raft of 19th century supernatural fiction.

He is a council member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association, a member of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and perhaps most proudly, is a Co-Director and faculty member of the York Antiquarian Book Seminar; an annual course introducing all comers to the delights, mysteries, and frustrations of the rare book trade.

Books, archives, and manuscripts bought and sold, collections and libraries built, quests undertaken, a sense of wonder maintained, enquiries welcomed.