Dealers in rare books, manuscripts, archives & ephemera of all kinds

Purchases remain the property of Carl Williams Rare Books until paid for in full. Postage and packing is charged extra at cost.

I buy as well as sell and will travel anywhere to see good books. I also deal in archives, undertake valuations, sell ephemera, photographs, manuscripts and original art.

 I tend to specialise in  The Occult, counterculture, Contemporary Art/Modern Art, protest, the sixties and so on.

I've worked in the rare book trade for twenty or so years. I helped to start the UK branch of a dotcom in '99 dealing rare and secondhand books then worked for Maggs Bros until 2015. For three or so of the years that I worked at Berkeley Square I was also on secondment to Julio Mario Santo Domingo's LSD Library. 

In the brief time that I have worked as an independent dealer I have, among other things, mounted small shows of Aktionsraum, Joseph Beuys and original calendar art from India with Tenderbooks. I also sold a major collection of protest posters produced by the Berkeley Poster Workshop to The Houghton Library. I am proud to say that I also did the valuation of Felix Dennis's Oz archive for London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Which was subsequently acquired by the Performance Department of the V&A.  In July 2018, I  produced a catalogue of material from the LSD Library called 'The Search For Soma'.