John Windle (bookseller)

John Windle went to St. Ronan's boarding school in Kent, UK from age seven,[1] and was later educated at Wellington College. In 1963 he relocated to France where he attended the University of Poitiers. In 1964 he began attending the University of Sussex.[2]

John Windle began his bookselling career with Bernard Quaritch in London in 1967. He then took up a doctoral fellowship in the Library School at UC Berkeley (incomplete) while working at John Howell-Books from 1971-1974.[3] In 1974 Windle became an independent antiquarian bookseller in the San Francisco area. He worked with his partner Ron Randall until 1979, when Windle moved to Venice CA to write two bibliographies, train with the Santa Monica Track Club, and study Tibetan Buddhism while working for William and Victoria Dailey's bookstore. After time spent in India and walking across the United States from Los Angeles to Washington DC and then Kings Bay GA to Cape Canaveral to protest nuclear weapons, Windle renewed his life as a bookseller again in Florida, where he built a mobile book store in a school bus and drove back to California selling books along the way.[2]

Windle eventually reopened his eponymous antiquarian bookstore in 1989 in San Francisco, California,[4] which focuses on a broad range of books but especially those of William Blake.[5][6] Windle’s bibliographies of Thomas Frognall Dibdin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin were published in 1999 and 2000 by Oak Knoll.[2] He has also co-authored a book about Blake with Robert N. Essick "A Troubled Paradise", as well as several books and catalogues of antiquarian interest. His publication "Grapes and Grape Vines of California" was selected by the Zamorano Club as one of the 120 most important books on California. Windle opened the William Blake Gallery in 2016, which became the first Blake-centered gallery in the world since Blake's own gallery opened (and closed) in 1805.[5] The gallery includes both books and artworks by William Blake for sale and has 2-3 themed shows a year, with published catalogues.[7]

Windle has also appeared on CNBC to discuss the use of rare books as long-term financial instruments, and as an expert witness in a multi-million dollar court case related to rare books where his opinion prevailed.[8]

Windle is a practicing Buddhist, and co-sponsored the visit of the Dalai Lama to Los Angeles in 1984. Following the visit, Windle moved to India to practice as a Tibetan monk at the Dalai Lama's monastery upon the Dalai Lama's invitation, until he was expelled from the country due to political tensions following the Bhopal disaster. In 1986, Windle marched for nine and a half months from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. as a part of the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament.[2] He is married to the eminent children's book author and bibliographer Chris Loker; they lived in Orinda, CA.