Thomas Kimball Brooker Explained

Thomas Kimball Brooker (born October 1, 1939) is a bibliophile, scholar and businessman.[1] [2]

Education and military service

Brooker graduated from Yale University in 1962. He served in the Navy Supply Corps 1962–1966 as lieutenant. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1968 and his Master's thesis was "Rare Books as a Hedge against Devaluation and Inflation."[3] [4]

Brooker received the M.A. in Art History at the University of Chicago in 1989. His master's paper topic was "The Diffusion of Binding Styles in the Sixteenth Century between Italy and France." He received the PhD at the University of Chicago in 1996. His doctoral dissertation was "Upright Works: The Emergence of the Vertical Library in the Sixteenth Century."[5]

Business career

Brooker was employed by Morgan Stanley in New York in 1968 working in the Corporate Finance Department, promoted to vice president in 1973 and managing director in 1976. Since 1989 he has been president of Barbara Oil Company.

He served on the Board of Directors of the NYSE Chicago.[6]

Bibliophile

In 1962, as a senior at Yale, Brooker was awarded the Adrian Van Sinderen Prize which encourages undergraduate students to collect books, build their own libraries and read for pleasure and education.[7] He became a member of the Grolier Club in 1962.

In 1992 he was honored with the Sir Thomas More Medal for Book Collecting, "Private Collecting for the Public Good," by the University of San Francisco Gleeson Library and the Gleeson Library Associates.[8] [9]

The T. Kimball Brooker Undergraduate Book Collecting Prize was endowed at the University of Chicago in 1994.[10]

Brooker is a Trustee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York[11] and the Newberry Library in Chicago.[12]

Brooker is a member of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie serving as president from 2006 to 2013.[13] He published in its journal, Bulletin du bibliophile, the oldest bibliophilic journal, notably, "Bindings Commissioned for Francis I's 'Italian Library' with Horizontal Spine Titles Dating from the Late 1530s to 1540."[14] [15]

Throughout his life, Brooker has collected over 1,300 sixteenth-century French and Italian books in their original bindings.[16] The collection was offered at Sotheby's during 2023–2025 as Bibliotheca Brookeriana: The T. Kimball Brooker Library of Renaissance Books and Bindings.[17] [18] [19] The collection includes around 1,000 Aldines published between the 1490s and the 1590s—the largest Aldine collection to come to market in over a century.[20]

He is a member of the Caxton Club of Chicago and funds an annual scholarship for attendance at the Rare Book School.[21] [22]

In 2020, Brooker was patron of the exhibit, "Poetry and Patronage: The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered." at the Morgan Library and Museum.[23]

Selected publications

Notes and References

  1. Southern, Keiran. "One Man's Astonishing Trove of Rare Books Set to Fetch $25m." The Times. August 10, 2023.
  2. https://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/461078/thomas-kimball-brooker-phd-presented-with-the-albert-nelson-marquis-lifetime-achievement-award-by-marquis-whos-who Thomas Kimball Brooker, PhD, Presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who's Who
  3. Creamer, Ella. "‘Unparalleled treasure trove’ of 16th-century texts worth $25m up for auction" The Guardian, August 11, 2023.
  4. Brooker, T. Kimball. 1968. Rare Books As an Investment and As a Possible Hedge against Inflation and Devaluation. Cambridge, Massachusetts OCLC 79305288
  5. Brooker, T. Kimball, and University of Chicago Department of Art. 1996. “Upright Works : The Emergence of the Vertical Library in the Sixteenth Century.” Dissertation.
  6. “Midwest stock exchange inc.” Wall Street Journal. 1986 Jan 17 1986/01/17/:1.
  7. https://vansinderen.yale.edu/book-collecting-prizes/winning-collections/1960-1969 Adrian Van Sinderen Prize
  8. Nice, Elizabeth. "President's Report." Gleeson Library Associates Newsletter. 21 Summer 1992:5.
  9. https://web.archive.org/web/20030705051345/http://usfca.edu/library/rarebook/gla/medal.html Sir Thomas More Medal for Book Collecting.
  10. https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/about/thelibrary/prizes-fellowships/brooker/ T. Kimball Brooker Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting.
  11. https://www.themorgan.org/about/board Board of Trustees and Administration.
  12. https://www.newberry.org/about/board-of-trustees Board of Trustees.
  13. "Poland was Host to the 27th Congress of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie." The Book Collector 60 (no 4), Winter 2011: 523-524.
  14. T. Kimball Brooker, "Bindings Commissioned for Francis I's 'Italian Library' with Horizontal Spine Titles Dating from the Late 1530s to 1540." Bulletin du Bibliophile. 1997, pp. 33-91.
  15. "Giroud, Vincent. Bulletin du bibliophile" Oxford Companion to the Book. 2010.
  16. Southern, Keiran. "One Man's Astonishing Trove of Rare Books Set to Fetch $25m." The Times. August 10, 2023.
  17. T. Kimball Brooker (introduction)Sotheby’s. 2023. Bibliotheca Brookeriana : A Renaissance Library. the Aldine Collection: Publications of the Aldine and Giunta Presses and Related Books. New York, 12 October 2023: New York: Sotheby’s.
  18. https://www.sothebys.com/en/series/bibliotheca-brookeriana-the-t-kimball-brooker-library-of-renaissance-books-and-bindings?locale=en Bibliotheca Brookeriana: The T. Kimball Brooker Library of Renaissance Books and Bindings
  19. Cormack, Rachel. "This Massive Collection of Renaissance-Era Books Could Fetch Over $25 Million at Auction." Robb Report. August 11, 2023.
  20. Creamer, Ella. "‘Unparalleled treasure trove’ of 16th-century texts worth $25m up for auction" The Guardian, August 11, 2023.
  21. Brooker, T. Kimball, and Caxton Club. 1982. In Praise of Bibliophily: Reminiscences of a Collector. Caxton Club, Chicago.
  22. https://caxtonclub.org/grants Grants
  23. Limper-Herz, Karen. "Poetry and Patronage: The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered." The Book Collector 60 (number 4) Winter 2011: 368-369.

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