Anthony Hobson (1921-2014) succeeded his father, Geoffrey Hobson (1882-1949), as a director of Sotheby's in charge of the book department and as a historian of bookbinding and book collecting. These activities were of course closely related and their scholarly researches and publications often grew out of the observations and discoveries they made as auctioneers. The collector who most profited from their advice was Major Abbey, whose English bindings (1490-1940) were the subject of an important monograph by the father, handsomely produced in 1940 by the Chiswick Press. The son's first book was French and Italian Collectors and their Bindings in the Library of J.R. Abbey, published in 1953 for the Roxburghe Club, which N. Barker in his obituary of Dr. Hobson for The Independent called ‘an astonishingly mature work for one just 30’. His expertise in medieval and illuminated manuscripts was considerable, too, and his greatest successes at Sotheby's were the Dyson Perrins manuscript sales (1958-59), the ‘New Series’ of Phillipps sales (1965-77) and the fine bindings and manuscripts of Major Abbey (1965-78). Dr. Hobson was president of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie and of the Bibliographical Society, a member of the Roxburghe Club and the Société des bibliophiles françois, and Honorary Foreign Corresponding Member of the Grolier Club of New York.
All books contain the bookplate of Anthony Robert Alwyn Hobson