Elmer Adler Book Collecting Prize: Elmer Adler

Born in 1884 in Rochester, New York, Elmer Adler was a printer, publisher, editor, and author. Adler founded The Pynson Printers, a private press in New York in 1922, helped found Random House in 1927, and founded the periodicals Colophon: A Book Collector’s Quarterly in 1930 and the New Colophon in 1947. An avid collector of books and fine prints, Adler moved his collection to Princeton University in 1940, where he also established a department of graphic arts, served as a professor, and was a curator for the library. Adler died in 1962.

Thompson, Lawrance. “Forty Mercer Street.” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 2, no. 1 (1940): 27–34.

Thompson, Lawrance. Elmer Adler at Princeton : A Tribute on the Occasion of His Retirement from the Princeton Faculty and from the Curatorship of the Graphic Arts Division of the Library. Princeton, N. J.: Prepared by the Friends of the Princeton Library and printed by Princeton University Press, 1952.