Lorne Bair Rare Books is a private-premises business, open to the public by appointment only. Our showroom is in Winchester, Virginia, about 80 miles west of Washington, D.C. and just five minutes off I-81. If you would like to see our inventory in person, we'd be delighted to have you pay a visit. Please give us as much advance notice as possible, as we travel extensively for book fairs, appraisals, and buying trips. Contact us for directions.

We are members of the Virginia Antiquarian Bookseller's Association (VABA); the Washington Antiquarian Bookseller's Association (WABA); and the Independent On Line Booksellers' Association (IOBA).

Following a number of years as a collector and book scout, Lorne Bair began his professional bookselling career in 1995 with the opening of Satisfied Mind Bookstore and Coffeehouse in downtown Winchester, Virginia. While the shop quickly became an institution among local book and coffee aficionados, Lorne grew increasingly less interested in general bookselling (and coffee!). In 2002, he closed the shop in order to develop his on-line, show and catalog businesses, and to focus on his primary specialty area of American Radical History and Literature, from the utopian experiments of the 18th and 19th centuries to the end of the Great Depression. Along the way, by dint of disposition and several fortunate acquisitions, he developed sub-specialties in Modern Fine Printing, the History of Science & Medicine, and Modern Poetry. Lorne currently serves as President of the Virginia Antiquarian Bookseller's Association, which he helped to found in 2002.

Practically any full-time bookseller (any married one, anyway) will tell you that success would have been impossible without the indulgence, patience, and support of his or her spouse. In our case this is literally true, as Lee Ann carried us financially through the turbulent (read: unprofitable) early years of our open shop, keeping a constant check on the acquisitions budget and ensuring that at least some attention was paid to our bottom line.

Lee Ann has an undergraduate degree in Music Therapy from Ohio University and a Masters in Piano Performance from the University of Oregon; she is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor of Piano at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, where she also offers private lessons for children and adults. Her students consistently take top honors in local and regional piano competitions. Lee Ann continues to extend a firm but gentle advisory hand with the book business, and her patience, while perhaps not stretched as close to its outer limits as in those early years, remains a thing of wonder and rare beauty.

Wil Cather first came to work for us in 1997, as a senior in high school; since then he has completed degrees in Comparative Literature and the Classics at the University of Virginia, as well as a number of courses in book conservation and bookbinding with Jill Deiss at Cattail Run Hand Bookbindery. He has worked variously as a bus driver, landscaper, busboy and, most recently, as our rare book cataloguer and researcher, where his formidable linguistic skills and education are perhaps put to greater use than in his former occupations.

Wil is currently pursuing plans for graduate study in rare book librarianship and conservation. He is the great-grandnephew of Winchester-born author Willa Cather, with whose works he has made a passing acquaintance.