Ray Riling

Raymond "Ray" Riling (1896-1974), a Philadelphia builder and arms collector, was an important arms book collector, dealer, author and publisher from the 1940s into the 1970s.

Riling's annotated bibliography Guns and Shooting, New York: Greenberg, 1951, although issued and reprinted (in 1982) in limited editions (of 1,500 and 500, respectively), remains in wide use as the standard reference in the out-of-print arms book trade. It contains over three thousand numbered and chronologically-arranged descriptions of books related to small arms from the fifteenth century through 1950, as well as several other useful lists. Similarly, his Powder Flask Book (1953) is the standard reference in the collecting field of later antique American powder flasks . Riling's wife, Beatrice Davis Riling (1904-1962), collaborated on these works.[1]

The Ray Riling Arms Book Co. no longer remains in the mail order business.