Sotheran's
Henry Sotheran Ltd, popularly referred to as Sotheran's, is a bookshop in London, England, claiming to be the oldest continuously operating bookshop in the United Kingdom and the oldest antiquarian bookshop in Europe.
History
Founded in 1761 in York by Henry Sotheran, the company established a presence in London in 1815. Over the decades, Sotheran's acquired and sold several notable libraries, including that of Laurence Sterne in 1768 and Charles Dickens in 1870. In 1892, it managed to secure Althorp's complete library, including its very rare collection of Caxtons, for £210,000 ; the collection was sold to Enriqueta Augustina Rylands, who erected in Manchester a permanent memorial of her husband in the John Rylands Library. In 1896, Sotheran's sold to J. P. Morgan a Gutenberg Bible on vellum, for £2,750, and an even more expensive collection of Byron manuscripts; the following year, it secured the Warwick Castle Shakespeare Library for Henry Clay Folger.Following the death of Henry 'Cecil' Sotheran, the last member of the Sotheran family to run the firm, Sotheran's was purchased by the bookseller Gabriel Wells. Among the investors was the banker and collector Anthony de Rothschild, a connection that ultimately led to the Rothschild banking firm acquiring the company outright in 1957. Sotheran's has since remained independently owned.