About: Ian Brabner, Rare Americana

Company history, professional affiliations

Ian Brabner, Rare Americana, LLC is a rare book firm based in Wilmington, Delaware. We specialize in 18th- and 19th-century American history. 

We buy, research, authenticate, catalog and offer for sale rare books and historic manuscripts. Our focus also includes buying and selling  ‘paper Americana’ and Visual Americana—broadsides, posters, banners, photographs, prints, graphics, and original artwork from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Our inventory centers on American history and culture, with an emphasis on materials that offer insight into the period’s politics, reform movements, and everyday life. Examples include an 1820s New England mendicant pamphlet, the autobiographies Frederick Douglass wrote throughout his life, a South Carolinian woman’s handwritten diary from the 1840s, a broadside announcing the hanging of John Brown, and correspondence from self-styled inventors and political agitators.

A curated selection of our stock is available online. We also publish short lists—e-lists of 25-30 selected items—and occasional print catalogs. We have exhibited at the ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair since 2006.

For over thirty years, we have helped collectors and institutions build historically significant collections—both in the United States and internationally.

Member: Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA). The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB). Manuscript Society. Ephemera Society.