Edwin Victor Glaser
June 7,1929 - July 31, 2017
Edwin V. Glaser, an internationally-known dealer in antiquarian books, died on July 31st. at Kaiser Hospital Vallejo, California. He had been diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in the fall of 2015.
Born June 7, 1929 in The Bronx, N.Y., he attended New York City public schools. He received a B.S. degree from the University of New Mexico in 1950, where he played two seasons of varsity baseball and was editor of the Daily Lobo, the campus newspaper. Mr. Glaser returned to New York where he earned a master’s degree from the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University. After spending several years as a reporter with the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin, he returned to New York where he joined his family’s business, a mid-size industrial fastener manufacturer. Though this was supposed to be a temporary situation, he stayed 13 years, married, and had two children.
Determining to change careers to something he found more personally satisfying, he started exploring the world of bookselling and began a part-time business dealing in general used books. He opened a small shop on the lower east side of Manhattan that he kept open nights and weekends. Learning on the job, and benefiting by the encouragement and collegiality of other members of the book trade, began to get a feel for the possibilities of the book business. After a few years he closed the shop and began dealing by mail order, progressing from general used books to outof-print scholarly books in the humanities for university libraries.
In 1969, he had the good fortune to buy a world-class private collection of rare and important medical books and the catalogue he produced helped establish his reputation as a specialist in medicine and science. At this point, he resigned from the manufacturing business and devoted himself fulltime to books.
In 1979, he reinvented himself once more, piling many cartons of books, a few pieces of furniture, two cats and one son into a rented van and moved to Sausalito, CA. He thrived in the new environment. At a New Year’s Eve party in1982-83 his good fortune continued as he met the love of his life, Lorraine Vivian. Mutual family responsibilities necessitated a long courtship and in 2001 they were married at their newlypurchased home in Napa.
Mr. Glaser was elected to membership in the prestigious Grolier Club of New York and the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco and was active in his professional trade organization, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, serving as president from 1986 through 1988. He also served as a faculty member of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminars from 1979 through 2010.
He is survived by his wife, Lorraine, sons Peter of Sausalito and Daniel of Monsefu, Peru, and his stepdaughter, Patti, of Petaluma, step-sons Kenneth of Napa and Stephen of Petaluma as well as their spouses, Carmen and Deanna. He is also survived by grandchildren Chris of Petaluma, Casey of Santa Rosa, and Leah of Petaluma, and three great-grandchildren, Kallista, Abigail and Broden of Petaluma.