Roy Vernon Sowers was born in Brantford, Ontario on August 7th, 1897. He spent most of his youth in the nearby town of London, Ontario, where he had a variety of odd jobs. Sowers attended the University of Toronto and graduated in 1921 before attending St. John's College at Oxford. Limited finances caused him to leave Oxford and travel to Germany before returning to Ontario.

He later moved to Pasadena, California and worked for Alice Millard, an antiquarian book dealer who lived in one of the area's Frank Lloyd Wright homes. Sowers eventually moved on to work at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. He later moved to San Francisco after marrying, but divorced his first wife and built a home in the mountains near Santa Cruz, California. Sowers was familiar with the owners of the Grabhorn Press and set up one of the first exhibitions about their press. He operated a rare book and fine print business out of his personal library until the late 1960s; he died in 1970.