Obituary Note: Louis Collins

Louis Collins, a longtime Seattle used bookseller and co-founder of the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair, died January 2. In the Seattle Review of Books, Paul Constant wrote: "Collins got his start as a bookseller in San Francisco, using his remarkable memory as a resource for customers who were in the market for specific rare titles. He worked as a bookseller for nearly a half century, right up until the day he died. For many decades, he sold books under the Louis Collins Books shingle out of a little blue house at 12th and Denny on Capitol Hill. He finally sold the property last year and moved to the north end of the city.... He deeply enjoyed working as a bookseller, but the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair was a true labor of love.... It was here in Seattle, among our readers and our collectors and our lovers of books, that he felt most at home. We will miss him greatly."

"He had books no one else had, and sold books no one else could," Jamie Lutton, owner of Twice Sold Tales, told the Stranger, adding: "I was nervously fond of him and admired him greatly. This is a huge loss for the community."

David Gregor of Gregor Rare Books, who had known Collins for decades and had run the fair alongside him for 13 years, said he was "one of the last of the old guards in Seattle. Not many left."

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