Nicholas Gouin Dufief of Philadelphia: Franco-American Bookseller, 1776-1834

by Madeleine B. Stern

Limited to 300 copies. Printed by W. Thomas Taylor. 81, 3 pages. cloth, paper spine label.. 8vo..

75 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Madeleine Bettina Stern was an independent scholar and rare book dealer. She graduated from Barnard College in 1932 with a B.A. in English literature. She received her M.A. in English literature from Columbia University in 1934. Stern was particularly known for her work on the writer Louisa May Alcott. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943 to write a biography of Alcott, which was eventually published in 1950. In 1945, she and her friend Leona Rostenberg opened Rostenberg & Stern Books. Rostenberg and Stern were active members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America, at a time when few women were members. The pair lived and worked in Rostenberg's house in the Bronx. They were known for creating unique rare book catalogs. In 1960, Stern helped found the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.
Stern and Leona Rostenberg became widely known in the late 1990s while in their late eighties when their memoir on the rare book trade, Old Books, Rare Friends, became a best seller.

Reviews

[Matt Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madeleine B. Stern’s brief biography of Nicholas Gouin Dufief of Philadelphia was an interesting find. The Franco-American bookseller, author, and language teacher counted among his clientele none other than Thomas Jefferson. And, among his store’s inventory, a large portion of the library of one Benjamin Franklin. Dufief’s dealings with (and on behalf of) Jefferson make up a lot of the book’s 70ish pages, and the description of the pitfalls and problems with shipping books in the early 1800s stands in stark contrast to the Amazon Prime-fueled world of today.