Nicolas Barker

Not to be confused with Nicholas Barker.
Nicolas Barker preparing to give the Beatrice Warde Memorial Lecture, November 2022[1]

Nicolas John Barker OBE FBA FSA (born 1932) is a British historian of printing and books.[2][3] He was Head of Conservation at the British Library from 1976 to 1992.

Barker was editor of The Book Collector from 1965-2016[4] and edited The Pleasures of Bibliophily: Fifty Years of the Book Collector, an Anthology. [5]

He was elected to the Roxburghe Club in 1970.[6] In 2000 The Great Book of Thomas Trevilian. A Facsimile from the manuscript in the Wormsley Library. With a Study by Nicolas Barker was published for presentation to his fellow members of the Roxburghe Club.[7] [8] It was printed in red and black by Susan Shaw at the Merrion Press. Sir Paul Getty commissioned the reproduction.[9]

He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998, and is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He held the Sandars Readership in Bibliography in 1999-2000 and lectured on "Type and type-founding in Britain 1485–1720."

In 2002, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.[10][11]

Barker gave the 2002 Panizzi Lecture at the British Library and was the A.S.W. Rosenbach Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.

A bibliography of his work was published to mark his 80th birthday in 2012.[12]

  1. ^ "The Beatrice Warde Memorial Lecture". St Bride Foundation. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  2. ^ "Nicolas Barker at Wells College". Wells Book Arts Center. 14 October 2013. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
  3. ^ Johnston, Alastair (2011). "Nicolas Barker". Hanging Quotes: Talking Book Arts, Typography & Poetry. Cuneiform Press. pp. 10–27. ISBN 9780982792667.
  4. ^ "Author: Nicolas Barker". Carcanet. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
  5. ^ Barker, Nicolas (2003). The Pleasures of Bibliophily: Fifty Years of the Book Collector, an Anthology. Edited by Nicolas J. Barker. London: British Library; New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2003.
  6. ^ Roxburghe Club Members.Roxburghe Club.
  7. ^ Robert. “Thomas Trevilian’s ‘Great Book’: ‘Historicall, Propheticall and Evangelicall.’” The British Art Journal 1, no. 2 (2000): 22–23.
  8. ^ Jervis, Simon. “The Great Book of Thomas Trevilian. A Facsimile from the Manuscript in the Wormsley Library.” The Burlington Magazine. LONDON: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd, 2004.
  9. ^ The Great Book of Thomas Trevilian. A Facsimile from the manuscript in the Wormsley Library.
  10. ^ "Barker, Nicolas John", Who's Who (online edition, Oxford University Press, December 2017). Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  11. ^ "Mr Nicolas Barker", British Academy. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  12. ^ Edwards, A. S. G. (2013). Nicolas Barker at Eighty: a list of his publications to mark his 80th birthday in 2012. New Castle: Oak Knoll. ISBN 9781584563235. Retrieved 5 October 2017.