Hamill & Barker

Margery Barker (1901-1980) and Frances Hamill (1904-1987) met while working in Fanny Butcher's Chicago bookshop. In 1928 they formed a partnership to run their own antiquarian bookstore. Their successful endeavors in the book trade and their ability to network and discover authors and build client relationships with them on visits to England enabled them to acquire prominent manuscripts and literary collections, including the diaries of Virginia Woolf. Many of their clients were members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and G.E. Moore.

Concerned with scholarly access to the papers of prominent writers, Hamill & Barker frequently offered collections to academic libraries before publicizing them to private collectors. Library collections that benefited from an association with Hamill & Barker include the Berg Collection at New York Public Library, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Harvard University Library, and Yale University Library. The firm sold both a copy of a New Testament printed by Gutenberg and the first secular book printed by Gutenberg in 1460, the Catholicon.

During World War II Hamill and Barker decided to suspend their antiquarian operation and work as tool-grinders to help the war effort. They stored their books in 1943 and opened for business again in 1946. Their stature in the bookselling community was noted when Frances Hamill became the first woman president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America in 1953.

Terrence A. Tanner (1948-2003) was hired by Hamill & Barker, Inc. in 1975 after gaining several years of experience as a book scout for other booksellers. He continued to work with Frances Hamill after Margery Barker's death in 1980, becoming sole proprietor of the firm after her death in 1987. He relocated the shop from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois in 1988, and operated it until his death in 2003.