Comments on: The Antiquarian Bookshops Of Old London

By: Amos Julien

Amos Julien — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 11:21:23 +0000

I would dearly recommend a visit to Walden Books in Camden Town: its a treasure house full of hidden gems and interesting titles.

By: Molly Guenther

Molly Guenther — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 16:01:59 +0000

Wonderful, thank you. For the providing the pictures of all the books, the booksellers, the customers, the store fronts. It was very enjoyable.
Again, thank you.

By: M J Barlow

M J Barlow — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 10:52:00 +0000

I caught the last days of the Charing X sellers, Josephs I visited weekly and having grown up in the north and with a diet of the Beano and Beezer and R.L Sevenson and H. R Haggard and then later Heinlein and Aldiss and Van Vogt, my eye was always drawn to the Victorian children’s books I paid between £5 (poor copy) to £20+ for a decent copy of the Boys Own annuals and Henty etc, for about a £10’er. They are still about that price now 50 years later.
In 1975 I was out of work (again) and wandered into a shop in Finsbury Park, Blackstock Road called “The Stroud Green Bedding Company” and (like I do now started talking to the dodgy looking owner)) I asked to see some gilt edged leather bound books he had on a shelf I couldn’t quite reach. Nah! he said, “bleedin’ fings books”, I puts ’em aht and vey still leave me wiv ‘ver crap” and then left me. I wandered the small shop (it wasn’t a bedding shop and wasn’t in Stroud Green) .HE was a thin drawn sallow Londoner with about 4 teeth who’s dad had had THE original shop in SG until the Germans bombed it.
He was a rare cove and looked like Dell Boy’s grandad, had stains all down his brown cavalry twill trousers a cheroot on and a trilby and a weird looking Alsatian dog who seemed to want me for lunch.
I got talking and he took me in the back room and threw blankets off about 7-8 tea-chests of books, the top ones were green and white crime penguins, the orange fiction all over the boxes and lots of other clean and nice serious literature and art, poetry and children’s books. He said he had a bloke who came and he sold them all to him. I asked how much would you ask? he said “vey must be a fasand books in that lot ver son, I’d want £50 quid, “hate the bleeding fings”
I bought them with my last £50 of £75 I had in my sock (and he lied, there was 732) I drove them to my bedsit and sold a small batch to a bookseller who I bought off in Camden Passage (now a famous author) and he gave me £120 for about 40 Penguins and copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses and an 1855 copy of Walt Whitman’s Leave’s of Grass in wrappers. Lets say the adage. “A little knowledge is dangerous” was true. I sold another batch to Eamon Nolan at Chancery Lane Books for £450 and then another batch from “Bob” for £750 and I have been selling books ever since. I had bought a TV and film directors books called Peter Hammond. If I had known then what i know now I would have contacted him and have always felt bad. Bob had a deal with a Pickford’s warehouse on the same corner and any late payers on storage they sold to Bob. I then bought a bricked up room from 1914 they located and the books were in old army type wooden crates all nailed down I watched them open them and the books were all fine 19th century literature and boys Victorian books. I paid £180 and then he cottoned on he was too cheap as his book clearer came and berated him. I never saw him again, but HE got me bookselling and there but for the grace of God…

By: Marcia Howard

Marcia Howard — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 19:56:35 +0000

Favourite and precious books are one of my treasured possessions

By: Saba

Saba — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:08:37 +0000

One of the all-time best posts! But, seeing all those people eager to read the beautiful volumes makes me rather sad. I am quite sure book lovers still exist, but only actually know two out here in the hinterlands of upstate New York.

By: aubrey

aubrey — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 19:52:25 +0000

During the late 60’s I worked in an engineer’s office nearby: and on my way home in the evening I used to idle my way past the Garrick and wander into these fascinating book shops. The shops I used to enter the most frequently were the late lamented Collets and Foyles where I’d purchase technical books and OS maps(one of the many aids I used in my cycling days). I read Tristram Shandy one time – left me clueless!

By: achim

achim — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 18:57:21 +0000

Second-hand bookshops seem to be gradually disappearing from our world. In the famous town of Royal Tunbridge Wells in the County of Kent, I visited 2007 an extraordinarily beautiful Antiquarian Bookshop — HALL’S BOOKSHOP.

It was here, at this very spot, that the wonderful short film “THE LAST BOOKSHOP” was made in 2012, a hymn to that slowly disappearing cultural institution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HOOpzcYTT8

Love & Peace
ACHIM

By: John C. Miles

John C. Miles — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 17:55:22 +0000

What wonderful, wonderful atmospheric photographs – oh, halcyon days! These emporia were havens of peace, calm, civility and represented the very best that London had to offer. I bought my treasured copy of Gervase Markham’s The English Husbandman from HM Fletcher in the late 1980s for the then-princely sum of £50. That amiable bookseller’s sales pitch was, ‘How can you possibly refuse – it’s a rare book you can actually READ!’

By: Jane Manley

Jane Manley — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 17:44:21 +0000

The first photo is of Mark’s and Co at 84 Charing Cross Road. It achieved worldwide fame when the American author Helene Hanff published a book of correspondence between herself and the staff from the late 1940s until the late 1960s. It was later turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft. How sad is it that 84 Charing Cross Road is now McDonald’s.

By: jennifer galton-fenzi

jennifer galton-fenzi — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 14:58:21 +0000

How interesting London used to be……and not forgetting the wonderful Welsh book shop, Griff’s, at No 4 Cecil Court.