Madeleine B. Stern

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Madeleine B. Stern" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Madeleine Bettina Stern (July 1, 1912 – August 18, 2007), born in New York, New York, was an independent scholar and rare book dealer. She graduated from Barnard College in 1932 with a B.A. in English literature. She received her M.A. in English literature from Columbia University in 1934. Stern was particularly known for her work on the writer Louisa May Alcott. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1943 to write a biography of Alcott, which was eventually published in 1950. In 1945, she and her friend Leona Rostenberg opened Rostenberg & Stern Books. Rostenberg and Stern were active members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America, at a time when few women were members.^[1] The pair lived and worked in Rostenberg's house in the Bronx. They were known for creating unique rare book catalogs.^[2] In 1960, Stern helped found the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.^[3]

Stern and Leona Rostenberg became widely known in the late 1990s while in their late eighties when their memoir on the rare book trade, Old Books, Rare Friends, became a best seller.