An early and innovative collector of association books, Paul Lemperly was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1858. He grew up on the west side of the city, near the banks of the Cuyahoga River; attended public schools; and graduated from West High School. He was married on 19 April 1881; he and his wife, Emma, had two children: Lucia and Charles. Lemperly's long career in business was spent with the wholesale drug firms Benton Myres Company and Hall-Van Gorder Company.

Lemperly's home on Clifton Boulevard in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood became a favorite gathering place for local book collectors and such out-of-town visitors as Eugene Field, DeWitt Miller, William Allen White, and Francis Wilson. On 19 February 1892 postcards signed by Lemperly, Francis Adon Hilliard, W. H. Gaylord, Clifford J. King, Charles Orr (the manager of the Austin-Taylor Bookstore in Cleveland), Charles A. Post, and Thomas Walton were sent to fifty Clevelanders...