Gabriel Wells

Gabriel Wells
Gabriel Wells
Born	Template:Birth date; Balassa-Gyarmath, Hungary
Died	November 6, 1946 (aged 85)
Occupation(s)	Antiquarian bookseller, historian, writer
Known for	Dismantling and marketing Gutenberg Bible leaves; presidency of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association

Gabriel Wells (January 24, 1861 – November 6, 1946) was a distinguished antiquarian bookseller, historian, and writer who held considerable influence in both American and British book markets during the early 1900s. In 1930, he assumed the presidency of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association.

His most remarkable commercial accomplishment involved dismantling an original Gutenberg Bible into individual leaves, which he marketed as “Noble Fragments.” This innovative method had a profound effect on the trade of rare books.

Early life

Originally named Gabor Weiss, he was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Balassa-Gyarmath, Hungary. Wells emigrated to the United States in 1894 and settled in Boston. He adopted the surname Wells from Weiss and cultivated a strong academic background, studying under Harvard’s William James and delivering lectures on philosophy. Proficient in eight languages, his linguistic expertise greatly facilitated his international antiquarian book enterprise.

Wells launched his bookselling career in New York City by acquiring copies of the ten-volume subscription edition of John L. Stoddard's Lectures at auctions. He would rebind these volumes and resell them to dealers lacking access to such subscription sets, employing a similar tactic with limited editions.

During the interwar period, Wells operated alongside competitor Dr. Rosenbach in London and Europe, procuring costly books for affluent American clients. Following Henry Cecil Sotheran’s death in 1930, Wells’ acquisitions from Sotheran's helped sustain that venerable business through the Great Depression. Henry Sotheran has been an independent antiquarian bookseller based in London since 1760.

Wells maintained a longstanding rivalry with Rosenbach, who attracted public attention by purchasing high-profile auction lots directly for collectors. In contrast, Wells expended greater sums overall but concentrated on less conspicuous titles, distributing primarily through trade networks. Differing from most dealers of his time, he never issued a sales catalog.

Items handled

In 1912, Wells acquired a jewelled edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, dubbed "The Great Omar," for £405—substantially below its £1,000 estimate. Crafted over nearly two years by Sangorski, it featured 1,050 jewels and was regarded as one of the most lavish book bindings of the twentieth century. Wells entrusted this treasure to a passenger aboard the RMS Titanic, where it was ultimately lost.

In 1922, Wells invested $200,000 for printing rights to produce a limited edition (1,024 copies) definitive collection of Mark Twain's works, containing verified autographs by Twain and Albert Bigelow Paine. The resulting 35-volume Gabriel Wells Definitive Edition was published between 1922 and 1923. Another significant purchase included the original manuscript of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal, which was later sold to collector Barton Currie prior to 1931 for less than the reported $75,000.

A landmark deal involved Wells’ acquisition of a Gutenberg Bible from Joseph Sabin in 1920. This two-volume Bible—one of only 41 surviving copies—was incomplete and damaged. Wells disassembled it and sold individual leaves to appeal to a wider audience. Well-preserved leaves were priced around $150 each (approximately $1,500 today), while those in poorer condition sold for about $100. Each leaf was housed in a morocco goatskin portfolio with gilt lettering and accompanied by an essay from A. Edward Newton. This strategy allowed libraries and universities to obtain missing pages; Wells donated all but one absent leaf to the New York Public Library.

In 1939, Wells became involved in legal proceedings after John Hayward disclosed that Lord Victor Rothschild’s first edition of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones contained pages from another edition, rendering it partially counterfeit. Rothschild had paid £3,500 for this copy along with an additional work. The dispute was resolved out of court after multiple dealers—including Dr. Rosenbach—were found to have overlooked the issue.

Besides his work as a bookseller, Wells authored pamphlets discussing social and economic topics relevant to his time.

Death

Wells remained unmarried throughout his life. His will allocated his assets among his brothers and sisters, their descendants, and various organizations such as the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Harvard University, Rutgers University, as well as the Hungarian town where he was born.

Essays

Appeal to Common Sense (Methuen, 1937)
Gentle Reactions (Doubleday, 1923)

Speeches

Edgar Allan Poe as a Mystic: Speech Delivered at the 125th Anniversary of Poe's Birth, Philadelphia, 1934 (American Book Collector)
What Is Wrong with the Human World: Lecture Presented to the Elizabethan Club at Yale University, 1940 (Literary Licensing, LLC, 2013)
Can Peace Be Maintained in Europe? (Lecture at University Club, New York, 1936)

Pamphlets

A Layman's Peace Plan (1924)
Are We a Democracy? (Doubleday, 1927)
On Capital Punishment (W. Heinemann Limited, 1929)
The Menace of Divorce (Literary Licensing, LLC, 2013)
The Great English Strike: Its Three Lessons (Doubleday, 1926)
Arbitration (Country Life Press, 1925)
If I Were France (Doubleday, 1926)
The Correlation of Capital and Labor (Doubleday, 1926)

Sources

David A. Randall, Dukedom Large Enough, Random House, New York, 1969