Albert Henry Spencer

Albert Henry Spencer (8 March 1886 – 20 February 1971), often referred to as A. H. Spencer, was an Australian bookseller. He was a specialist in antiquarian bookselling and Australiana and established the Hill of Content bookshop in Melbourne, one of that city's "finest bookshops". He has been called "one of the last links with an heroic age of Australian bookselling and collecting".

Early life Spencer was born in Balmain, New South Wales on 8 March 1886. His parents were Henry Spencer, a labourer who had been born Henrik Bertelsen in Denmark, and Alice Jane (née Prynne).

His father died when Bert (as he was always known to his family and friends) was just two years old, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. He attended Waverley Superior Public School where a sympathetic teacher and a class reader were to inspire in him a life-long love of poetry and especially of the Romantic poets.

Angus & Robertson, Sydney Eight months later, he joined the booksellers and publishers Angus & Robertson as an errand boy. One of his regular tasks at this time was to deliver books by cab to various customers including David Scott Mitchell, whose collection would later become the basis for the Mitchell Library. Between 1900 and 1922 he was trained in the bookselling trade by "that formidable trio of booksellers", George Robertson and his employees Frederick Wymark and Jim Tyrrell. He became an expert in book-related Australiana and was made the head of Angus & Robertson's secondhand book department. and Henry White. The sale of the Sticht collection helped ensure the survival of Hill of Content and the sale of the other two collections was "icing on the cake".

Spencer also published a number of books, mainly of verse, under the imprint of "A. H. Spencer, Hill of Content". as the Shining Sea Bookroom. In the same year he superintended the transfer of Sir William Dixson's collection to the Public Library of New South Wales. In 1957 he rejoined his former employers Angus & Robertson in their Elizabeth Street, Melbourne bookshop and in 1959 he published his memoirs The Hill of Content.

Personal life In 1909 Spencer married Eileen Rebecca O'Connor (died 1964), an accomplished pianist. They had two children, Robert Spencer (died 1946) and Joan Gerstad (died 1970).

Spencer was a Presbyterian, a Freemason and a Rotarian.

He died at Parkville, Victoria on 20 February 1971.