Uncover the story of A.S.W. Rosenbach, the rare book dealer who bought and sold eight Gutenberg Bibles—what most spend a lifetime chasing.
Plenty of authors have become household names, as their work transcends history and culture and takes on a life of its own. But this is less common for booksellers. These individuals are more likely to work behind the scenes, keeping books moving from reader to reader, but staying out of the limelight.
A.S.W. Rosenbach is about as close as we can get to an exception here. While his name is not as recognizable as those of Harper Lee, Jane Austen, or Charles Dickens, his remarkable career has made him one of the most celebrated booksellers in history.
This is largely thanks to his incredible knack for finding some seriously sought-after books, including several copies of one of the most sought-after.
A Legendary Bookseller’s Background
A.S.W. Rosenbach was born Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach in Philadelphia in 1876. His interest in books – in particular, old and rare books began when he was still young. While attending the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1890s, he located a copy of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s prologue for the opening of the Drury Lane Theatre in 1747. It was a first edition, and highly valuable, but Rosenbach picked it up for only $3.60.
This would be around $137.77 today – a not-inconsiderable sum for a book. Several years later, however, Rosenbach would refuse an offer of $5,000 for it, which would equate to almost $200,000 today.
Understanding that he had a knack for this kind of thing, Rosenbach started the Rosenbach Company in 1903, with his brother Philip. Philip took care of antique items, while Abraham hunted down valuable books.
Over the years, A.S.W. Rosenbach became known as the foremost book collector in the world. Working with the likes of Henry Huntington and J.P. Morgan, Rosenbach tracked down and secured many of the world’s most elusive titles. His purchase of The Bay Psalm Book in 1947, for $151,000 (almost $2.2 million in 2025) represented the highest fee ever paid for a book at the time.
The Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible is among the first mass-produced books in history and was published around 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg. Also known as the 42-Line Bible, Gutenberg’s work used movable type to accelerate and revolutionize the book printing and distribution process.
Though the book was mass-produced, there actually weren’t that many copies published during the 15th Century.
Somewhere between 160 and 185 copies seems to be the academic consensus.
Of these copies, only around 49 are still extant to this day, and only 25 are actually complete.
The fragmented copies vary in quality – some just have a couple of pages missing, others are significantly depleted.
There are also a few individual pages still in existence, which may suggest a further 16 copies. This would bring the total number of surviving Gutenberg Bibles – in one form or another – up to 65.
A.S.W. Rosenbach and The Gutenberg Bible
One of Rosenbach’s many claims to fame is that he bought and sold eight Gutenberg Bibles over his career. In other words, almost one-third of the surviving copies of the Bible, and between 4% and 5% of all the copies that have ever existed, passed through Rosenbach’s hands.
Many of the Gutenberg Bibles that are preserved in museums and collections to this day have been safeguarded thanks to Rosenbach’s work.
Other famous professional coups for Rosenbach include his acquisition of Shakespeare’s First Folio – something he did not once, but thirty times. In total, all of the book purchases he made over his life are estimated to be over $75,000,000.
An Incredible Career
As well as being a bookseller, Rosenbach was a prolific writer. He wrote a number of essays for publishers like the Atlantic, and also wrote two books: Books and Bidders: The Adventures of a Bibliophile in 1927, and A Book Hunter’s Holiday: Adventures with Books and Manuscripts in 1936.
But it is Rosenbach’s expertise as a book dealer for which he is most remembered. He famously presented a huge collection of children’s books to the Free Library in his native Philadelphia and established the Rosenbach Fellowship in Bibliography at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.
So, to bring us full circle to the question that kicked off this post, yes, one bookseller did handle eight Gutenberg Bibles. That bookseller’s name was Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach, and those Bibles are just one achievement across his glittering career.
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John Burns
John has been writing ever since he was small, and is delighted to be able to make his living as a writer now he’s not quite so small. Literature has always been a big part of John’s life, and he loves sharing this passion with readers from all over the world.
