About Us

I am the son of a prominent book collector, Kenneth E. Hill, and grew up in a house filled with old books.  After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, I served a classic apprenticeship, working for four leading antiquarian booksellers in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. In 1978 I started my own company - Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc. - and have specialized in science, medicine, natural history, bibliography and the history of book collecting, and early printed books.

Over the years I have issued more than 240 catalogues devoted to these subjects. My wife, Megumi Kaneko Hill, and I work together in our business. Our older son, Timothy Yoshiro "Yoshi" Hill, a graduate of Hamilton College, joined our firm in May of 2016.

Some of our clients include private collections and important museums and libraries, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Watson Library; Library of Congress; National Gallery of Art (D.C.); Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library; Harvard University's Houghton Library, Yenching Library, and Fine Arts Library; Princeton University's Firestone Library and Marquand Library of Art and Archeology; Getty Research Institute; Dumbarton Oaks Library and Archives; Indiana University's Lilly Library; Columbia University's Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library; US Naval Observatory Library (D.C.); Huntington Library; Frick Art Research Library; New York Public Library; University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts; National Library of Medicine; Stanford University's Special Collections and Hoover Institution;  University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library; KB, nationale bibliotheek (The Hague); Rijksmuseum; Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin); ETH Bibliothek (Zurich); Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Munich); State Library of Victoria (Melbourne); McGill University's Osler Library of the History of Medicine; Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Munich); Tate Library & Archive; Cambridge University Library; University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries; etc.

Many famous books have passed through our hands, including first editions of Aristotle, Copernicus, Vesalius, Harvey, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. We also specialize in important manuscripts related to the history of science, technology, and medicine as well as illuminated manuscripts. We work closely with private collectors, museums, and libraries, selling them books from our stock, advising them on other acquisitions, performing appraisals, and representing them at auctions in America and throughout Europe.

For the past 20 years, we have also specialized in antiquarian Japanese, Chinese, and Korean illustrated books, manuscripts, and scrolls. Megumi, a graduate of Rikkyo University in Tokyo with a major in early Japanese literature, concentrates in this field.

We issue four to six printed catalogues a year and update our web-page with recent acquisitions on a weekly basis.

We are members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) and are pleased to adhere to their codes of ethics and practice.