Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company Announces Death of David M. Szewczyk

David M. Szewczyk, bibliophile and co-proprietor of the Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company (PRB&M), has died in the course of his recovery from complications following surgery in April.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, David enjoyed a long career of scholarly research and involvement in the rare book trade. After a master's degree in Spanish and history, David worked as a volunteer cataloguer at Indiana University's Lilly Library, before researching his dissertation for a year in Mexico as a Fulbright scholar and going on in 1973 to work at the Rosenbach Foundation as its chief manuscripts cataloguer.

He established PRB&M as an antiquarian rare bookselling operation in 1984 and joined the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America in 1985, working from 2006 out of a lovely historic (1820) house at Frankford Arsenal, which he renovated with co-proprietor Cynthia Davis Buffington. PRB&M has long specialized in early books of Europe and the Americas, U.S. and Latin Americana, original manuscripts, Mexico and New World languages, travel, cookery, law, and religion. In 2001, the partners added a side business, SessaBks (named after the shop's much-loved cat Sessa), concentrating on used, affordable books; from 2022, the firm concentrated entirely on appraisals.

Fine Books & Collections had a long and happy relationship with David, and we offer our condolences to his family and friends.