bookmann.

1570 T. Norton Disclosing of Great Bull sig. Bi A signification that our bookemen are priuie to it.

1583 Ld. Burghley Execution of Iustice sig. C.ii^v Scholers, or bookemen.

1598 W. Shakespeare Love's Labour's Lost iv. ii. 34 You two are book-men, Can you tel me by your wit. View more context for this quotation

1621 R. Montagu Diatribæ Hist. Tithes 403 You, so great a booke-man, know well enough, etc.

1767 R. Bentley Philodamus i. ii. 3 Is there no middle Between the harsh formality of bookmen, And trifling delicacy that makes woman?

1817 M. Edgeworth Ormond II. v. 99 Did you ever hear of the stoics that the bookmen talk of..?

1859 T. P. Thompson Audi Alteram Partem II. lxxxiii. 45 A certain Hermann, whom the book-men call Arminius.

1871 J. Morley Crit. Misc. (1886) I. 75 He figured as the philosopher and bookman of the party.

1958 J. Carew Black Midas vi. 95 I hear thet white man pay for you schoolin' and you turn a book man.

1618 S. Daniel Coll. Hist. Eng. To Rdr. sig. A4 For the errors herein committed, either by mine owne mistakings, or the Printers ouersight, I must craue a pardon of course, it is a Fate common to Bookes and Booke-men, and wee cannot auoide it.

1655 J. Goodwin Six Book-sellers Proctor Non-suited 3 I take his book-men..(and charge them accordingly) with the omission of several other words, besides.

1755 J. Smith Printer's Gram. vii. 176 Names of places, in Catalogues, at the end of lines, are understood by book-men, tho' they are not always shortened the same way.

1803 Flowers of Lit. I. 19 Lasses, young and old, who run over a novel of three, four, or five volumes, faster than book-men can put them into boards.

1831 New Sporting Mag. July 156/1 He thought I looked like a ‘magazine gentleman’, or ‘a book man’.

1975 New Yorker 28 Apr. 135/3 To loiter on Fleet Street as the early editions come off the press.., to be a bookman among bookmen, is to touch on Johnson's own career at its vital nodes.

1983 Times 14 Mar. 13/1 Concerted action in the publishing business is a rare phenomenon. Bookmen tend to be..suspicious of the view that they have interests in common.

2004 Financial Times 9 Oct. (Mag. section) 27/1 If British athletes were as internationally successful as British bookmen and bookwomen, the UK would have brought back a hundred gold medals from the Olympic Games this summer.

1885 A. Lang Rhymes a la Mode 75 There treasures bound for Longepierre Keep brilliant their morocco blue... No Shakespere Quarto search defies, And Caxtons grow as blossoms grew, Within that Book-man's Paradise!

1891 Amer. Stationer 8 Jan. 54/3 I am a bookman by taste, inclination and education.

1911 A. Bennett Mental Efficiency vi. 72 The chief interest of many of my readers is avowedly books... When one is a bookman one is a bookman during about twenty-three and three-quarter hours in every day.

1988 J. Greenfield Care of Fine Bks. iv. 136 An appraisor [sic] must be a bookman, that is must have a wide general knowledge of books, bibliography, and other reference material.

2010 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 21 Mar. (Front section) 23/6 (advt.) Jim was a collector of antiquarian natural history books, a longtime member of The Grolier Club and the consummate bookman.