Bernard Alexander Christian Quaritch was born on April 23, 1819, in Worbis, Thüringen, Germany.

He was an English bookseller and collector. After being apprenticed to a bookseller, he went to London in 1842 and was employed by Henry Bohn, the publisher. In 1847, he started a bookseller's business off Leicester Square, becoming naturalized as a British subject. In 1848, he started to issue a monthly Catalogue of Foreign and English Books. About 1858 he began to purchase rare books, one of the earliest of such purchases being a copy of the Mazarine Bible (known as the Gutenberg Bible) and within forty years he possessed six copies of this rare and valuable edition. In 1860, he moved to Piccadilly. In 1873, he published the “Bibliotheca Xylographica, Typographica et Palaeographica”, a remarkable catalogue of early productions of the printing press of all countries. He became a regular buyer at all the principal book-sales of Europe and America, and from time to time published a variety of other catalogues of old books, e.g., the "Supplemental Catalogue" (1877) and the "General Catalogue of Old Books and Manuscripts" (7 vols., 1887-1888). Quaritch had developed the largest trade in antiquarian books in the world. He left his business to his son Bernard Alfred Quaritch (1871-1913).

In 1849, he married Helen Gellan (1832–1899). He died on December 17, 1899, in London, England.