The Ibooknet Blog

Looking for a present for a book lover?

2011-12-20T16:04:00.007Z

As lots of friends and relatives can be difficult to buy a gift for, gift vouchers and gift cards are very useful. An number of ibooknet sellers offer gift cards on their own websites, available to purchase online and in a wide variety of denominations. They can be spent online on the dealer's website and most dealers ship books to most countries. Here are a few dealers who sell gift cards, with a brief outline of the dealer's specialism, so you can select the card most likely to delight your recipient.

Bagot Books carries a general stock with an emphasis on UK travel/topography/history.

Jane Badger Books carries a wide range of pony books: everything from Ruby Ferguson to the Pullein-Thompsons, with many interesting detours between.

C L Hawley carries literary criticism and literary biography including books on Jane Austen, the Brontes, Mrs Gaskell, Sylvia Plath, William Morris, the thirties poets etc., plus a general academic stock, and books on Yorkshire and Lancashire including dialect poetry.

Peakirk Books specialises in childrens books, has a good range of crime fiction and carries a general stock.

Stephen Foster carries rare books and fine bindings.

Amwell Book Company carries modern art, architecture and photography and has a shop in Central London. You can read more about their shop here.

East Riding Books carries books on all aspects of music.

Marchhouse Books carries Children's and illustrated books plus a very small general stock.

The pictured book is:

a first edition of Fire in the Punchbowl from the stock of Jane Badger Books

N.B. individual dealers have their own terms and conditions so do read the individual websites properly and email the dealer if you are unsure.

National Poetry Day

2011-10-06T18:46:00.004+01:00

There's lots happening for National Poetry Day 2011. The National Poetry Day poet in residence for 2011 is Jo Shapcott and she's written a poem on the theme of games especially for the day. You can read Jo Shapcott's poem here.

Faber and Faber meanwhile tweeted about their YouTube channel of poetry readings including this one of Simon Armitage reads 'Aviators' from Seeing Stars

More poetry news includes the awarding of the Forward Prize for Poetry last night to the four times nominated John Burnside. Burnside has finally won the Forward Poetry Prize for best collection with Black Cat Bone.

And in a happy poetic coincidence the Nobel Prize for Literature went to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer.

Man Booker Prize 2011 Shortlist Announced

2011-09-06T11:20:00.003+01:00

Two first time novelists and four independent publishers make the Man Booker Prize 2011 Shortlist of six:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)

Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books)

Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)

Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail)

Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)

A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)

The shortlist was announced by Chair of Judges, author and former Director-General of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington, at a press conference held at Man’s London headquarters. The winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on Tuesday 18 October at a dinner at London’s Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC.

25% off Children's Collectable Books

2011-07-01T17:46:00.003+01:00

From Peakirk Books: TODAY OUR SALE BEGINS. We are having a big 'July summer Madness' 25% off all our stock sale starting today. Of course it is only available for stock bought on our own site at Peakirk Books because we can't afford to take 25% off stock on the other sites where we have to pay so much commission as well - we would then be trading at such a big loss.

If you want to take advantage of buying our books at a 25% discount - between July 1st and July 31st 2011, simply go to our own site, and purchase, using the e code MAD007 in the coupon box at the checkout, and you will automatically get the discount. We specialise in children's collectable books, but there are lots of other books there too - 26,000 of them! It's worth a browse.

Orange Prize for Fiction 2011 shortlist

2011-04-12T16:07:00.002+01:00

Now in its 16th year, The Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman, today announces the 2011 shortlist.

Emma Donoghue (Irish) - Room; Picador; 7th Novel

Aminatta Forna (British/Sierra Leonean) - The Memory of Love; Bloomsbury; 2nd Novel

Emma Henderson (British) - Grace Williams Says it Loud; Sceptre; 1st Novel

Nicole Krauss (American) - Great House; Viking; 3rd Novel

Téa Obreht (Serbian/American) - The Tiger’s Wife; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 1st Novel

Kathleen Winter (Canadian) - Annabel; Jonathan Cape; 1st Novel

The judges for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction are: The 2011 judges are Bettany Hughes, (Chair), Liz Calder, Tracy Chevalier, Helen Lederer, Susanna Reid.

Peakirk Books at Children's and Crime Fiction Book Fair Bath

2011-04-08T13:27:00.007+01:00

Ibooknet member's Peakirk Books will be at the PBFA - Specialist Childrens & Crime Fiction Book Fair

Bath Assembly Rooms 10.00 - 4.00 Saturday 9th April

The Boy Biggles pictured is from their stock; please contact Peakirk Books for details.

Authors for Japan

2011-03-18T19:45:00.004Z

Authors for Japan is the brainchild of author Keris Stainton. She appealed on twitter for authors to donate signed books, signed proofs, or time and advice for aspiring authors and she has received 70 offers which are being auctioned for the IRC for Japan.

You can bid in GBP by leaving a message on the right blog post - all donations at the end of the auction will be made by the winner directly to the International Red Cross so it is an excellent cause.

Ibooknet sellers new to twitter and blogging

2011-03-10T19:04:00.002Z

Stephen Foster has a blog Bookselling in Bell Street

and Stella and Rose's Books are now on twitter.

Around Ibooknet Members' blogs

2011-03-07T19:17:00.005Z

Books, Mud and Compost is appalled by mummified frogs.

Bagotbooks's Blog is sorry, but he doesn't have a clue.

Juxtabook is scared and soggy but enchanted.

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2011

2011-02-11T17:16:00.002Z

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2011 has announced four regional shortlists for the Best Book and Best First Book awards. The regional winners of the Best Book and Best First Book prizes will be announced on the 3rd March, with the final programme commencing on the 16th May at Sydney Writers’ Festival in Australia.

Regional shortlists:

Africa Best Book:
The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone)
Men of the South by Sukiswa Wanner (South Africa)
The Unseen Leopard by Bridget Pitt (South Africa)
Oil on Water by Helon Habila (Nigeria)
Blood at Bay by Sue Rabie (South Africa)
Banquet at Brabazan by Patricia Schonstein (South Africa)

Africa Best First Book:
Happiness is a Four Letter Word by Cynthia Jele (South Africa)
Bitter Leaf by Chioma Okereke (Nigeria)
The Fossil Artist by Graeme Friedman (South Africa)
Colour Blind by Uzoma Uponi (Nigeria)
Voice of America by E. C. Osondu (Nigeria)
Wall of Days by Alastair Bruce (South Africa)

Canada and Caribbean Best Book:
The Sky is Falling by Caroline Adderson (Canada)
Room by Emma Donahue (Canada)
The Master of Happy Endings by Jack Hodgins (Canada)
In The Fabled East by Adam Lewis Schroeder (Canada)
The Death of Donna Whalen by Michael Winter (Canada)
Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard by Richard B. Wright (Canada)

Canada and Caribbean Best First Book:
Bird Eat Bird by Katrina Best (Canada)
Doing Dangerously Well by Carole Enahoro (Canada)
Mennonites Don’t Dance by Darcie Friesen Hossack (Canada)
Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod (Canada)
The Cake is for the Party by Sarah Selecky (Canada)
Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco (Canada)

South Asia and Europe Best Book:
Lyrics Alley by Leila Abouleila (UK)
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (UK)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (UK)
The Long Song by Andrea Levy (UK)
Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido (UK)
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (UK)

South Asia and Europe Best First Book:
Serious Men by Manu Joseph (India)
Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph (India)
The House with the Blue Shutters by Lisa Hilton (UK)
Children of the Sun by Max Shaefer (UK)
Grace Williams says it Loud by Emma Henderson (UK)
Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller (UK)

South East Asia and Pacific Best Book:
Reading Madame Bovary by Amanda Lohrey (Australia)
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (Australia)
Time’s Long Ruin by Stephen Orr (Australia)
Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones (New Zealand)
Notorious by Roberta Lowing (Australia)
Gifted by Patrick Evans (New Zealand)

South East Asia and Pacific Best First Book:
21 Immortals by Rozlan Mohd Noor (Malaysia)
A Man Melting by Craig Cliff (New Zealand)
The Graphologist’s Apprentice by Whiti Hereaka (New Zealand)
The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay (Australia)
Traitor by Stephen Daisley (Australia/New Zealand)
A Few Right Thinking Men by Sulari Gentill (Australia)

Save our Libraries

2011-02-07T13:18:00.002Z

Ibooknet seller Jane Badger is quoted in a piece in The Independent regarding the possible closure of Irchester library. I have my own piece on libraries at Juxtabook, which I was surprised and flattered to see translated into Spanish.

Dick King-Smith dies aged 88

2011-01-05T19:34:00.004Z

Children's novelist Dick King-Smith has died aged 88. Born in 1922 Gloucestershire, Mr King-Smith fought in Italy with the Grenadier Guards in World War II, before returning to England where he was a farmer for 20 years beginning to publish books only in his 50s.

His first book, The Fox Busters, was published in 1978 and was followed by dozens of others. His best know is probably The Sheep-Pig after it was made into the hit film Babe. Other titles include the Sophie series, The Invisible Dog, Harriet the Hare and The Witch of Blackberry Bottom.

Dick King-Smith was made an OBE in December 2009.

Illustrated by a first edition of Sophie Hits Six by Dick King-Smith, from the stock of Stella & Roses Books.

Sales and Offers from Ibooknet booksellers

2011-01-04T20:41:00.005Z

Lund Theological books. New Year 10% discount on all books on website. Put atwit11a in Promotional code box. Offer good till 10 January.

Jane Badger Books January Sale - Children's Books: For the whole of January, I'm doing 20% off all non-pony children's books.

Illustrated with one of Jane's sale books:

"BB" [Watkins-Pitchford, Denys] Manka the Sky Gipsy
London Methuen 1979 0416145809 / 9780416145809 Hard Cover VG++ VG++ Price: was 20.00 GBP now 16.00 GBP

Books of the Year 2010

2010-12-31T15:01:00.018Z

Some Ibooknet sellers give a run down of their best reads of the year:

Best reads of the year from Philip of Lund Theological Books

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. Sarah Bakewell 978-0701178925 Chatto & Windus 2010

I love Montaigne's Essays, and this book fills in a lot of background, historical and philosophical.

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Diarmaid MacCulloch Allen Lane 2009 978-0713998696

Magisterial and enjoyable, but too big for the bath.

Mistress Masham's Repose. T H White

Lovely sequel to Swift's tale of Gulliver in Lilliput. Set in Northamptonshire. Originally published in the 1960s I think.

Snow Crash. Neal Stephenson

Published around 1992, this science fiction novel set in a disfunctioning near future in the USA foretells all sorts of developments which have come to pass in the cyberworld of our time, and some which have almost done so. I was bowled over by this author, and have another of his books lined up to read in the new year. A rattling good read.

The Bible: The Biography. Karen Armstrong 2007 1-84354-396-6

Armstrong is the best populariser of religious thought I know of today. Despite my having two degrees in theology I learnt an awful lot from this well-written book.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Paul Collier. Oxford UP 2008

The title says it all, but this book has won prizes for its concise analysis of the problems of the poorest countries and its suggested remedies. Quite short, and very readable.

Simon of Simon French Books also discusses books for the bath:

I had a summer of reading post-apocalyptic/catastrophe novels. I particularly liked Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, George R. Stewart's Earth Abides and Nevil Shute's On the Beach (although this last was a bit depressing even for this genre!). The pick of the bunch was Justin Cronin's The Passage. It's a hefty book at some 750 pages, so again, not one for the bath, but it is the first book for a long time that I've been so engrossed by that a couple of hours solid reading has passed in a flash. One can see the influence of Earth Abides in it and it bears a comparison to (and possibly even surpasses) Stephen King's The Stand. So good was it that when I finished it, I was sorely tempted to start it again.

For some light holiday reading (and having just seen the tv show) I'm rereading Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Now there's a bath-time book!

Rather less apocalyptic was Barbara of March House Books' choice:

The Little Round House by Marion St. John Webb (1956 edition with illustrations by Jean Walmsley Heap). I’ve sold lots of copies over the years and decided it was time to read it! Children’s story about an ordinary (or extraordinary!) pillar-box and the adventures of Mr. Papingay, the home-made fairy, Mrs. Tupp and all the rest of them.

Notes from An Exhibition by Patrick Gale. Rachel Kelly is an artist full of creative highs and crippling lows she’s also something of an enigma to her husband and four children. So when she is found dead in her Penzance Studio, leaving behind some extraordinary new paintings, there’s a painful need for answers.

Passing for Normal: Tourette’s OCD and growing up crazy by Amy Wilensky – memoir of a young woman’s struggle to come to terms with a life plagued by irrational behaviour.

The Life and Works of Alfred Bestall illustrator of Rupert Bear by Caroline G Bott – more for dipping into when time allows but an interesting read none the less.

Nigel from Bagot Books was able to narrow his choice down to just one interesting volume:

My favourite book of 2010 must be Peter Orlando Hutchinson's
Diary of a Devon Antiquary 1871-1894 (9780857040756).
It is the second volume of a selection from his journals, illustrated with
his own watercolours and sketches: volume one was published ten years ago so
I was pleased to read v.2 at last. He's best-remembered as an antiquary and water colourist, but took an interest in anything novel or unusual,
including geology, astronomy, meteorology, the Enclosures, new railways,
etc; in his later years he became an archaeologist rather than an antiquary,
recording and illustrating discoveries in their context, rather than just
collecting them. He was kind to animals, helpful to people less fortunate
than himself, he played the French horn and flute, and he was delightfully
eccentric. He had a cannon which had been captured from pirates, and would
wheel it round Sidmouth in the 1850s firing it; and at the age of 64, while
on a picnic with four friends, he surreptitiously put on a false nose and a
pair of large goggle-eyed spectacles 'much to the amusement of the ladies'.
He spent a lot of his later life building a new house out of bits of old
churches - the result wasn't very comfortable, but it's still there in
Sidmouth.

Audubon's Birds of America auctioned for £7 million.

2010-12-08T12:49:00.002Z

A first edition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America has just been auctioned at Sotheby’s for £7,000,000. Lord Hesketh was selling off some of his library (presumably he hasn’t the room since he sold his family seat, Easton Neston, five years ago).
The book, in four volumes in contemporary diced Russia gilt, comes with a little cabinet to keep them in, and was expected to go for £4-6 million. There are only 119 known complete copies, and nearly all of them are owned by institutions.
The nearest I have been to a copy was in Temple Newsam in Leeds, where it’s possible to see where Lady Hertford had the one volume she owned cut up so she could have the pretty birds pasted on to her Chinese wallpaper, as described in my blog.

Christmas Gift Cards

2010-12-06T14:51:00.007Z

Peakirk Books carries children's books.

Stephen Foster carries rare books and fine bindings.

Amwell Book Company carries modern art, architecture and photography and has a shop in Central London. You can read more about their shop here.

East Riding Books carries books on all aspects of music.

Marchhouse Books carries Children's and illustrated books plus a very small general stock.

The pictured books are:

a first edition of Fire in the Punchbowl from the stock of Jane Badger Books ;

and The Last Books of H G Wells: The Happy Turning and Mind at the End of Its Tether

from the stock of Bagot Books.

N.B. individual dealers have their own terms and conditions so do read the individual websites properly and email the dealer if you are unsure.

Vintage children's books as Christmas presents

2010-12-06T13:19:00.007Z

My colleague Barbara at March House Books has a lovely display on her website - see here. I can also recommend Peakirk Books and Stella and Roses books for vintage children's books. The lovely Jane of Jane Badger Books can supply you with vintage pony books at all prices and her website is mine of information and reviews.

I sell a small amount of children's myself too on C L Hawley Books. Go to our browse categories page and under C you'll find several sections of children's books.

Most good indie booksellers will happily supply photos of books by email if you ask. Very few websites have everything photographed as stock is individual and changes so fast.

The range of images at the top are of vintage children's books at March House Books from Barbara's range of gifts under £30. The Famous Five - Five Go Down to the Sea is from C L Hawley Books.

Glastonbury, Arthur and Somerset

2010-11-30T22:54:00.010Z

By Lynn of Bailey Hill Bookshop.

Based in Somerset, the home of Arthurian legend, I had to read the new Phil Rickman Bones of Avalon. It rather compliments the stock we either hold or try to acquire in our Somerset section. The book is a good mixture of fact and fiction. The plot deals with a journey to Glastonbury by John Dee and Robert Dudley on work for Queen Elizabeth and concerning a popish plot by the French to overthrow her. For research Rickman has relied on the authority of David Starkey, Keith Thomas and Frances Yates amongst others. One book of particular interest he has drawn on is Glastonbury Abbey The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous by James Carley. This fascinating book gives a detailed history of the association of Arthurian Legend and Glastonbury. Supplementing this knowledge are works on the area by Geoffrey Ashe well known for his publications on Arthurian Legend, Robert Dunning the Somerset County Historian, and Philip Rahtz and his archaeological work on Glastonbury. Of course all this is still very topical with Peter Ackroyd's new publication on King Arthur and the Holy Grail, The Death of King Arthur: The Immortal Legend.

Sadly many of the associations with the legend have become tarnished with a New Age aura and the more serious aspect of their importance is overlooked. Despite the overlay of crystal shops, music festivals etc. Glastonbury still has a sense of place that can still be said to exert a mystical appeal.

Closer to Castle Cary is the site of Cadbury Castle, excavated in the 1960’s by Leslie Alcock and described in his book Why This Camelot. This was published by Thames and Hudson and I currently haven’t got a copy in stock but am always happy to buy one in good condition. John Steinbeck lived near Cadbury Castle, in Redlynch outside of Bruton, and it was here he wrote his book King Arthur and the Noble Knights.

In the wider area of Somerset books one is always on the lookout for anything from the Somerset Folk Series, a really charming series published in the twenties by the Somerset Folk Society and it includes titles such as the Holy Wells of Somerset, Somerset Drama, Somerset Dialect. All the books are well researched and well presented. Hard to come by and I will buy them. Early copies of A Glastonbury Romance and other Cowper Powys titles would be appreciated. I am also on the lookout for a Clarendon Press monograph on Wells that was published in the early 1990’s. I have never managed to find one on the internet.

If you visit us in Somerset you can still walk the Leland Trail, the same trail John Leland* took to Glastonbury to document the wealth of Glastonbury Abbey, you can walk around Cadbury Castle or you can go to Glastonbury and climb the Tor where you will be treated to wonderful skys and the landscape of rynes that surround Glastonbury.

Bailey Hill Bookshop was featured recently in the top 50 best bookshops in the Independent and featured in the Guardian - My Perfect Day - by Amy Jenkins.

You can view Bailey Hill Bookshop's books on Somerset here.

*there is a new publication from the Bodleian library of John Leland's On Famous Men edited and translated by James Carley. It has just been published ISBN 978185243679 and costs £120.

Petrie Museum Book Auction

2010-11-18T20:12:00.002Z

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology is part of UCL (University College London), is one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world, and has just reorganised their displays.
They’re holding their annual book auction to raise money, with 179 items mostly, but not exclusively, on Egyptology. It’s initially online, but it will finish with a live auction at the museum on December 8. The books are listed at the Heritage Key website.
UCL also has an excellent website in Digital Egypt, which has thousands of pages of resources, including 3D reconstructions of archaeological sites.

Bookbinders and Bicycles

2010-11-15T13:54:00.004Z

Cambridge is so wonderful to get around on a bicycle! I just took a lovely old (and valuable) book to the Post Office to send Special Delivery. I then popped into one of the ancient and beautiful College libraries to look at some books, including some old leather-bound Bibles from the Chapel which have obviously been “lovingly used and cherished for many years” which in Bookseller-speak could mean they are falling apart! However, they are much too nice to discard and we will do our best to find them good homes – perhaps via a visit to our wonderful Bookbinder which was the last stop on my circuit of the city. All this in about an hour: by car, it would have taken me most of the afternoon and involved lots of time sitting in traffic and looking for parking.

By Ruth of Plurabelle Books.

For books on Cambridge try Plurabelle Books and A Book for All Reasons and for books on bicycles try Stella & Rose's Books.

The image is by Anka of Happy Hang Around Blog.

The Success of Independent Bookshops

2010-11-06T11:04:00.006Z

On the weekend that Campaign for Real Books officially launches it is interesting to see that there's an article in the *FT about the success of indie bookshops in the current economic climate. New book sellers Foyles, Daunt Books and Jaffé and Neale are all mentioned in dispatches.

For a full list of the ibooknet sellers offering the CAMBO discount please see here

* You have to register with the FT to read the article but it there is a free level of registration which give you access to a limited number of articles a month. Thank you to Paul of Orangeberry Books for pointing out the FT article.

The Russia Season at The Travel Bookshop

2010-11-02T20:34:00.006Z

To mark the centenary of Leo Tolstoy's death and the 150th anniversary of Anton Chekhov's birth The Travel Bookshop will be hosting a series of talks about Russia and Russian literature throughout November 2010. Confirmed events include talks by the biographer of both Tolstoy and Chekhov Rosamund Bartlett, historian Rachel Polonsky, and poet and biographer Elaine Feinstein.

Thursday 11th November - Rosamund Bartlett on Leo Tolstoy
To mark the 100th anniversary of Tolstoy's death biographer Rosamund Bartlett will be discussing her latest book "Tolstoy: A Russian Life" and the man who long life straddled the 19th and 20th centuries and whose rebellious life reflected Russia's own turbulent history.

Tuesday 16th November - Elaine Feinstein on Anna Akhmatova
Poet and biographer Elaine Feinstein will be talking about the poet Anna Akhmatova. As well as her sparkling genius as a poet, Akhmatova showed immense courage in her resistance to Stalin's regime, during which her husband and son were held captive.

Thursday 18th November - The Orwell Prize Presents: Orwell on Russia
So what was - and what is - Orwell's influence on Russia? The Orwell Prize is delighted to be bringing Masha Karp (journalist, translator of Animal Farm into Russian) and John Lloyd (contributing editor and former Moscow Bureau Chief, Financial Times) together to talk about Orwell and Russia, chaired by Jean Seaton (director of the Orwell Prize).

Monday 22nd November - Rachel Polonsky on Molotov's Magic Lantern
Academic Rachel Polonsky will be discussing her book "Molotov's Magic Lantern: A Journey in Russian History".

Saturday 20th November - Pass On A Poem
"Pass on a Poem" presents a very special evening of readings of Russian poetry.

Tuesday 23rd November - Rosamund Bartlett on Chekhov: The Traveller
Rosamund Bartlett, biographer and translator of Russian literature, will be discussing the work and life of Anton Chekhov, looking in particular at his travels and the important impact that place had on his work.

Ibooknet members stocking books on Tolstoy or Russia include:

A Book for All Reasons
Barter Books
Plurabelle Books
C L Hawley
Marijana Dworski

The book images are:

Ptichka (the Little Bird) by Tolstoy from the stock of Marijana Dworski

and

Anna Akhmatova: Her Poetry by David Wells from the stock of C L Hawley

Campaign for Real Books

2010-10-21T11:21:00.014+01:00

A Campaign for Real Books has been launched. It aims to support the book trade in the UK, both new books and secondhand, online shops and bricks and mortar.

As a member you'll receive a simple paper CAMBO card entitling you to 10% discount when you spend over £10 at independent bookshops. It's a book token that works all year round; it's valid in both new and second hand bookshops and when you buy one it will enables the campaign to do all this and more:

•support new and secondhand independent bookshops across the UK

•campaign to save threatened bookshops and libraries

•support independent printers, publishers, papermakers, binders, private presses and all those whose livelihoods depend on paper books

•hold and sponsor book fairs, literary festivals and other events

•organise prizes for authors, shops, independent publishers, designers, illustrators and others associated with the book trade

•develop our website with news, views, interviews, links to shops, books for sale and much, much more

Plus you'll get free or discounted admission to all CAMBO events, a newsletter and more!

You can start showing your support by pre-registering today - and when you do, you'll receive an extra two months' membership free, meaning your CAMBO card will save money on books this Christmas and next!

Ibooknet sellers who have signed up to offer a CAMBO discount include:

A Book for All Reasons

C L Hawley

Stephen Foster

March House Books

Aucott & Thomas

Amwell Book Company

Bailey Hill Book Shop

Jane Badger Books

East Riding Books

Marijana Dworski Books

Books & Bygones

Local history book fair, Beverley, Yorkshire

2010-10-20T20:13:00.005+01:00

A local history book fair will be held at the Treasure House, in Champney Road, Beverley, Yorkshire on Saturday, 23 October 10.00am - 4.00pm.

Now in its 24th year, the annual local history book fair hosted by East Riding of Yorkshire Council's archives and local studies service has changed venue this year to the Treasure House.

Around 35 organisations will participate in the event, including the council's archives and local studies service and museums and library services, local history societies, family history societies, other specialist interest organisations relating to the locality and region, as well as publishers and booksellers.

Yorkshire local history books from the stock of East Riding Books :

A History of Hull by Edward Gillett and Kenneth A.
MacMahon

Historic Beverley by Ivan & Elisabeth Hall

Philip Larkin (9 August 1922 - 2 December 1985)

2010-10-17T19:07:00.010+01:00

Philip Larkin by Gill of East Riding Books

I started my bookselling career in the 1960s at the bookshop of Hull University.
A regular customer in those days was Philip Larkin, the university librarian. He came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, published by the Marvel Press, which was a small, local publishing house, literally a small house, next to an off-licence and a fish-and-chip shop.

Jean Hartley, Philip Larkin, the Marvel Press and Me

His third book of poetry, The Whitsun Weddings (1964) was published during my time there. I well remember many customers eagerly awaiting the day of publication and a large number of copies had been ordered anticipating the demand.

Larkin was chosen in a 2003 Poetry Book Society survey, almost two decades after his death, as Britain's best-loved poet of the previous 50 years, and in 2008 The Times named him Britain's greatest post-war writer.

This year a number of cultural events have marked the 25 years since Larkin's death
in 1985. Larkin's adopted home, Kingston upon Hull where he spent 30 years, is marking the anniversary with the Larkin 25 Festival, taking place over 25 weeks, from 12 June - 2 December 2010.

There is a tourist trail of all the places that inspired the poet; his work place, the Brynmor Jones Library; his lodgings at the top floor of a house in Pearson Park which prompted him to use the title High Windows for his last major poetry collection; his home in the mid 70s in Newland Park is also included as are the shops, restaurants and pubs where he drank and listened to his favourite music, he was jazz critic for the Daily Telegraph for ten years. The trail extends also to the East Riding countryside and the old churches Larkin used to visit on his bicycle.

Larkin's Jazz: Essays and Reviews

Larkin with Toads. 40 giant toad sculptures, each about 1m tall and made of fibreglass were commissioned and have been decorated by artists and community groups. They were on display in various areas of the city from July to September. The inspiration for these sculptures were his poems "Toads" and "Toads Revisited".

On 25th September the toads were auctioned and raised over £60,000. Bids ranged from £1250 to £3600 per toad which far exceeded expectations. Many of the toads have been bought by private bidders from all over the country, a few will remain on public view in the city with four staying in their current locations. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, arts funds and the Lord Mayor's charities.

Following a competitive commissioning process to select a sculptor to create a lasting memorial to Larkin, internationally renowned sculptor Martin Jennings was selected to create a statue of Larkin at Hull Paragon Interchange. The statue will be unveiled on 2 December 2010, the exact anniversary of Larkin's death and the closing date of the Larkin25 commemorations.

Punkphibian Artist: Liz Dees

Books by and about Philip Larkin including first editions, poetry collections and literary criticism can be found amongst the stock of the following Ibooknet members:

C L Hawley
Plurabelle Books
Stephen Foster

Royal Society Prize for Science Books 2010

2010-10-06T22:48:00.002+01:00

The shortlisted authors and judges are having a discussion at this free event at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, London, on 21 October at 6.30pm. If you have any questions you'd like to put to them, from past experience I suggest you get there to join the queue ages before 5.45, the time the doors open, as it's no booking, just turn up. They do usually have an overflow video feed to cater for the excess, but then you might as well stay at home and watch it on the live broadcast at royalsociety.org/live or at your leisure later on at royalsociety.tv.
The shortlisted books are: A World Without Ice by Henry Pollack; Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic by Frederick Grinnell; God’s Philosophers: How the medieval world laid the foundations of modern science by James Hannam; Life Ascending by Nick Lane; We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown; and Why Does E=mc2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

Enid Blyton's papers saved

2010-09-23T10:00:00.005+01:00

Well, some of them. Bearing in mind her prolific output, very few original manuscripts have survived. Blyton's daughter, the late Gillian Baverstock, had some, and they have now been sold. Seven Stories Museum, in Newcastle, has bought seven, including three Famous Fives.

Whatever you think about Enid Blyton's oeuvre, she is still immensely collectable. I had a short and intense Blyton phase as a child. I remember overhearing my mother talking to a friend as I worked my way through a pile of Blytons from the library. "Why ever do you let Jane readthose?" asked the friend. "It's a phase," replied my mother. "She'll read them all and that will be that. If I try and stop her she'll hang on to them forever." I remember at the time being impressed with this piece of motherly wisdom. She was quite right, too. I finished my Blyton phase, and have never been able to read one since. I have tried. Just can't do it. I wonder if mother had banned them if I'd now have a priceless collection of dustjacketed Blyton beauties, instead of a collection redolent of horse.

For those with a serious Blyton habit, Ibooknet members have some marvellous books in stock, catering to all pockets, from Stella and Rose's lovely first edition of The Magic Faraway Tree (£1,800),

to Peakirk Books' Five Have Plenty of Fun (£10.00) and March House Books' The Mystery of the Spiteful Letters (£26.00).

Bailey Hill Book Shop in The Guardian

2010-08-24T17:15:00.004+01:00

Ibooknet member Bailey Hill Book Shop has been mentioned in a nice piece in The Guardian My Perfect Days out in the UK. Scroll to just over half way and the section subtitled: Amy Jenkins, screenwriter – Arthurian legends and a hard boiled egg, Somerset.

Amy Jenkins says:

"Next stop is nearby Castle Cary, one of the prettiest hamstone towns in the area. Make sure you take in the charming Round House, built in 1779 to lock up local miscreants, and then head for Bailey Hill Bookshop (01963 350917, baileyhillbookshop.co.uk), which is the nicest I know. There's a lovely upstairs gallery where the secondhand books are kept and you are welcome to sit for hours and browse."

Roald Dahl Funny Prize

2010-08-16T10:43:00.003+01:00

Held at The National Theatre on Saturday 11 September 2010, the Roald Dahl Funny Prize is part of the annual celebration of legendary children’s author, Roald Dahl.

Michael Rosen, poet and former Children’s Laureate, is the brains behind the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. To mark the third year of the prize and the fifth annual Roald Dahl Day, he is joined by a host of special guests including author Philip Ardagh and comedian Shappi Khorsandi, both Roald Dahl Funny Prize judges.

Side-splitting stories, revolting rhymes, and priceless poems are guaranteed to make you and your children guffaw. Even the book-signing afterwards will have you in stitches.

Click here to buy tickets for the event

The prize has two categories:

• The funniest book for children aged six and under

• The funniest book for children aged seven to fourteen

Verily Anderson, 1915-2010

2010-08-06T09:46:00.004+01:00

Verily Anderson was an author whose writing received what her obituarist in The Times called "respectful attention". The daughter of a vicar, she was born in Edgbaston, and grew up in East Sussex, where she went to Normanhurst School. Here, whether you owned a horse or not, foxhunting was on the curriculum. Verily Anderson showed some musical talent, and was accepted at the Royal College of Music, but her time there ended abruptly. Her father stopped paying the fees when it became clear she would not succeed as a concert pianist.

As a child, she had been a keen guide, and had many badges. Using these as qualifications, she embarked on a varied series of jobs: designing toffee papers; a chauffeur, and by 1939, a sub-editor on The Guide, the Guides' magazine.

In 1940 she married Donald Anderson, a playwright, and the couple both became freelance writers. They had five children, and when Donald died in 1956, Verily Anderson had to support the family on her own. She wrote about bringing up her family on virtually nothing (the wonderfully named Spam Tomorrow as well as five others), and wrote the eight book Brownie series. Alas, the Brownie books were considered too exciting by the Girl Guide Association for it to support them.

I had no Brownie experience with which to compare them, having not been allowed to join the Brownies, but I found the books completely enchanting as a child: they were a window into another world where girls worked together and had adventures.

Verily Anderson carried on writing virtually until her death. The day before she died, she finished a book about Herstmonceux Castle.

This piece is illustrated with the following:

Daughters of Divinity: Hart-Davis, London, 1960. 1st edition hardback in dw, vg/vg. Very clean copy in d/w that has slightly browned in places. This book comes from Malcolm Saville's book collection, and contains the inscription "Malcolm Saville best wishes Verily Anderson" on fep. £70.00 Peakirk Books

Brownies on Wheels: Brockhampton Press, 1st edn, 1966. VG/VG. Very good book in very good dustjacket. No previous owner's name, pages clean, binding tight. Black and white illustrations by Edgar Norfield. Very good unclipped dustjacket (9/6) with minimal wear to spine tips and corners. A holiday for Brownies in a real gipsy caravan! The trek into the New Forest provides Amanda, Tulip, Lucinda and their Brownie friends with an exciting holiday, but it also proves how resourceful Brownies can be... £10.00 March House Books

Conan Doyle's old house, Undershaw, to be redeveloped

2010-08-02T22:52:00.003+01:00

Undershaw is the house Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived in, having had it built in 1897 as his wife needed to move into the country for health reasons. He lived there for ten years, and wrote while there, among other things, The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Undershaw Preservation Trust would like to turn the Grade II listed building into a museum, but in June Waverley District Council granted listed building and planning consent for the conversion of the house into three apartments with an extension containing five town houses. The council has previously spent over £70,000 on emergency repairs to the building which had been neglected by the owners.

There has been a lengthy campaign, the latest stage of which has seen a number of people, including Conan Doyle’s great-great-nephews, Joshua and Oliver Conan Doyle, writing to Jeremy Hunt, MP for South West Surrey - he had previously been in favour of preserving the property. Stephen Fry, Christopher Frayling and Uri Geller are listed among the campaign's supporters.

You can read on at Bagotbooks's Blog.

Five go to Tintagel

2010-07-31T22:42:00.002+01:00

Further Famous Five news: on the afternoon of August 10 there will be readings from Five Go to Sea in the courtyard of Tintagel Castle, and I can't think of a more evocative setting for storytelling. Mike O'Connor, renowned storyteller, musician, and researcher into Cornwall's folklore and musical heritage, will be telling the tales.

Dornford Yates and C. W. Stamper

2010-07-28T18:35:00.006+01:00

In 1913 Mills and Boon published a book called ‘What I Know’, by C. W. Stamper, the memoirs of a chauffeur/motor engineer to King Edward VII from 1905-10, with an acknowledgement in the foreword to Dornford Yates 'but for whose tireless assistance these memories might never have been published'.

Dornford Yates (real name Cecil William Mercer) was at this time still a practising barrister but he was short of work and had been writing stories for the Windsor Magazine, a popular monthly, since 1911. His first book in his own name however, a collection of these short stories, would not appear until 1914. After WW1 he went on to give up the bar, became a full-time writer and wrote a further thirty-three books.

Although no acknowledgement of ‘What I Know’ ever appeared in Dornford Yates’ other works it was presumed that he was the ghost-writer but there was never any certainty. In 1982 A. J. Smithers biography of Dornford Yates failed to mention the title at all although there was a note in the preface to the 2nd edition in 1985 that the existence of the book had since come to his notice. Yates himself never mentioned it in his quasi-autobiographies.

The full story of how the connection has been established, in Yates' own hand, can be seen at A Book for all Reasons

Man Booker Longlist Announced

2010-07-27T19:01:00.006+01:00

The Man Booker judges have announced the long list of thirteen titles. This years judges, chaired by Andrew Motion former Poet Laureate, are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.

Three authors have been shortlisted before: David Mitchell (twice shortlisted in 2001 for number9dream and in 2004 for Cloud Atlas), Damon Galgut (in 2003 for The Good Doctor) and Rose Tremain (shortlisted in 1989 for Restoration). She was also a judge for the Booker Prize in 1988 and 2000.

Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice for his book Kalooki Nights in 2006 and for Who's Sorry Now? in 2002.

Ibooknet members who stock a lot of modern fiction including first editions and signed copies are Simon French, Stephen Foster, The Glass Key, Hessay Books, Diaskari Books (contact chris.tyzack@btinternet.com ) and Barter Books.

The long listed titles are:

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Faber and Faber)

Room by Emma Donoghue (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (Penguin - Fig Tree)

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)

The Long Song by Andrea Levy (Headline Publishing Group – Headline Review)

C by Tom McCarthy (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)

February by Lisa Moore (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Trespass by Rose Tremain (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

Enid Blyton for the Twenty-first Century

2010-07-26T18:51:00.010+01:00

By Nigel of Bagot Books.

In Saturday’s Guardian there was an article about Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books getting a ‘makeover’ – changing some of the terminology to fit modern times, for example ‘mother’ to ‘mum’, ‘mercy me’ to ‘oh no’, and ‘fellow’ to ‘old man’. The new language is supposed to be ‘timeless’ according to Hodder, but presumably it’s as timeless as today – or rather, today’s children’s language as adult editors imagine it. Presumably in fifty years’ time the language of speech in these books will seem not only dated, but anachronistic, as the rest of the books are remaining unchanged. The reasoning is that the language puts children off reading the books, but I think this underestimates the intelligence of children. (I like this comment from Tony Summerfield, who runs the Enid Blyton Society: ‘How can you change Nobby to Ned and yet leave Dick and Fanny?’)

Reads more thoughts on the modernising of Enid Blyton by Bagot Books here.

You can see Enid Blyton books for sale from Bagot Books here, from Stella and Rose's Books here, from March House Books here, and from Peakirk Books here.

This post is illustrated by a book from the stock of Stella and Rose's Books.

The Really Good Read

2010-07-24T11:33:00.005+01:00

The RNIB have a money raising scheme The Really Good Read. Because only 5 per cent of books are available in formats that blind and partially sighted people can read the RNIB is inviting readers to join book lovers all over the UK going bonkers about books to raise money for RNIB.

The RNIB fund-raising suggestions include book clubs, literary pub quizes, bring and buy book sales and more. You will need to register on the The Really Good Read website for a fundraising pack.

The British Archaeology Awards winners announced

2010-07-19T22:20:00.002+01:00

The winners of the British Archaeology Awards were announced this evening. The Best Archaeological Book was deemed to be Britain's Lost World: the re-discovery of Doggerland by Vince Gaffney, Simon Fitch & David Smith, published by the Council for British Archaeology.
The other winners are listed on the award's website.

Waverton Good Read Award

2010-07-13T19:57:00.006+01:00

Every year the residents of Waverton make an award to the best British debut novel published in the previous 12 months. 61 novels were submitted for the 2009/10 Waverton Good Read Award.

The result of this year's vote was announced at the Waverton Carnival on 3rd July. The winner of the 2009/10 Waverton Good Read Award is Andrew Sharp for his novel The Ghosts of Eden.

Previous winners are:

•2004 Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
•2005 Jonathan Trigell – Boy A
•2006 Marina Lewycka – A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
•2007 Nicola Monaghan – The Killing Jar
•2008 Paul Torday - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
•2009 Tom Rob Smith - Child 44

The illustration is a signed first edition of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka from the stock of Aucott & Thomas.

At the time of writing Diaskari Books have two first editions of Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith in stock. (Contact chris.tyzack@btinternet.com )

Bookdealing birthdays

2010-07-08T19:44:00.011+01:00

Two members are celebrating trade milestones this month.

Jane Badger tells her own story on her blog Books, Mud and Compost of how she began buying and selling. She also has a lovely celebratory pony image on her website Jane Badger Books and details of The Pony Books Competition - test your pony book knowledge with 80 questions on everything from colours to characters. The top scorer will win a £50 book token for her site, and also there is a special offer of 10% off all orders on the sales site for a month!

The Dolphin Summer by Monica Edwards shown is a Children's Book Club edition of one of Edward's rarer titles sold by Jane Badger Books.

It is ten years since C L Hawley (me!) started trading. After struggling to find academic books when doing an MA whilst living in a rural backwater I began tentatively buying and selling used and recently out of print literary criticism in July 2000. The first book I sold was Seamus Heaney by fellow poet Blake Morrison. I gave up the day job nine years ago and joined Ibooknet the same year. I sell from my own site C L Hawley Books and blog at Juxtabook. To celebrate this month I have special offers on my website and on Juxtabook so do please visit.

The book shown is the first publication of The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh, published in the literary and arts periodical Horizon, edited by Cyril Connolly and available from C L Hawley Books.

BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction won by Barbara Demick

2010-07-01T20:57:00.004+01:00

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, a Los Angeles Times journalist, has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. The account of life in North Korea drawn from interviews with defectors was described by Evan Davis, presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today show and chairman of the judges, as "gripping and moving".

Nothing to Envy beat five other works to the prize.

The short list was:

•Alex’s Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos (Bloomsbury)
•Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Granta)
•Blood Knots by Luke Jennings (Atlantic Books)
•Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Penguin, Allen Lane)
•A Gambling Man by Jenny Uglow (Faber and Faber)
•Catching Fire: How Cooking made us Human by Richard Wrangham (Profile Books)

Desmond Elliott Prize for new writers winner announced

2010-06-23T23:51:00.002+01:00

The winner of the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for new writers was announced tonight as Ali Shaw's The Girl with Glass Feet, published by Atlantic Books at £7.99.

Shaw has worked as a bookseller and at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, but now is writing full-time. The plot, inspired by Kafka's Metamorphosis, follows a girl who is slowly turning to glass from the feet up.

The other two shortlisted books were Before the Earthquake by Maria Allen and Talk of the Town by Jacob Polley.

Heart of England Book Fair

2010-06-21T13:17:00.007+01:00

Ibooknet members Peakirk Books and Simon French Books are attending the Heart of England Book Fair at the National Motorcycle Museum, Coventry Road, Bickenhill, Solihull, West Midlands B92 0EJ (J6 of M42) on Sunday 27th June.

Peakirk Books specialise in children and illustrated books including works by BB (Watkins-Pitchford). Biggs, Margaret. Breary, Nancy. Brent-Dyer, Elinor. Bruce, Dorita Fairlie. Blyton, Enid; Buckeridge, Anthony. Edwards, Monica. Forest, Antonia. Hill, Lorna. Johns, W.E. some Ladybirds ( pre 1980). Mallory, Clare. Martin, J.P. Mitchell, Gladys. Needham, Violet. Observers Books. Oxenham, E.J. Pardoe, Iris. Price, Evadne. Rae, G. Saville, Malcolm. Trevor, Elleston. Welch, Ronald.

Simon French Books specialise in Modern First Edition books, including many fine and signed titles for the discerning collector.

The book illustrating this post is from the stock of Peakirk Books:

Challenge for the Chalet School By Elinor Brent-Dyer

Publisher: London: Chambers, 1966

Seller ID: 69333

1st edition; Hbk in d/w; nice copy of book; school presentation plate inside; price clipped;Vg+/Vg;

Girls chalet school stories;

Price = 100.00 GBP

Nobel-winning author Jose Saramago dies

2010-06-18T14:12:00.006+01:00

The 87 year old Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago has died. Best known for works such as Blindness and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (which won the PEN Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award) as well as the controversial The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

You can read the New York Time Obituary here and an interview with Jose Saramago on The Guardian here.

Ibooknet member Simon French Books has a couple of nice first editions of Jose Saramago novels.

British Archaeology Awards

2010-06-18T12:53:00.001+01:00

And yet another award – the British Archaeology Awards. There are nominations for a variety of categories, including Best Archaeological Project, Best Presentation of Archaeology in the Media, and Best Archaeological Discovery, I’ve listed these on my own blog. The nominations for Best Archaeological Book are:

Britain's Oldest Art: The Ice Age Cave Art of Creswell Crags by Paul Bahn & Paul Pettitt
Europe's Lost World: the re-discovery of Doggerland by Vince Gaffney, Simon Fitch & David Smith
The Rose and The Globe, playhouses of Shakespeare's Bankside, Southwark: Excavations 1988-1991 by Julian Bowsher & Pat Miller

Royal Society Prize for Science Books

2010-06-17T19:17:00.006+01:00

The longlist for this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books - the world's most prestigious award for science writing - has been announced.

* We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown
* Why Does E=mc2? By Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
* Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne
* In Search of the Multiverse by John Gribbin
* Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic by Frederick Grinnell
* God’s Philosophers: How the medieval world laid the foundations of modern science by James Hannam
* Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen
* Darwin’s Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England by Steve Jones
* Life Ascending by Nick Lane
* The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist
* Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell
* A World Without Ice by Henry Pollack

The judges on the judging panel are: Maggie Philbin, radio & television presenter (Chair); Professor Tim Birkhead, Fellow of the Royal Society; Tracy Chevalier, author; Robin Ince, stand-up comedian, writer & actor; Dr Janet Anders, Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow.

The shortlist will be announced on 24th August 2010.

An Alternative World Cup Squad

2010-06-11T10:35:00.007+01:00

If you keep hearing the name Defoe over the next few weeks and wonder what the author of Robinson Crusoe has done to get himself in the news then this take on the world cup might be the one for you.

Several Ibooknet members have books on South Africa (including South African fiction, history or politics). You can try the stock of Plurabelle Books, C L Hawley and Barter Books.

For Daniel Defoe or the eighteenth century novel try C L Hawley or Stella & Rose's Books.

The copy of Robinson Crusoe used to illustrate this post is from the stock of Stella & Rose's Books.

Easy Bookshelves for an Alcove

2010-06-09T15:03:00.005+01:00

A solution for bookstorage in the older house by Philip Lund of Lund Theological Books

Lots of older British houses have chimney breasts in living rooms and bedrooms which look ideal for putting bookshelves in. At first glance it would seem simple to screw a few battens on the facing walls of the alcove and put some shelves across between them. However, anyone who has ever tried drilling into a brick wall knows how difficult it is to put in holes that are exactly at right angles to the surface, and lined up horizontally. Drill bits slip, they encounter hard material, they end up slightly in the wrong place. By the time you have made two holes for every batten, and put in two battens for each shelf, and have got half a dozen or more shelves fitted you will be very lucky to have a set of perfectly positioned horizontal shelves.

And I see lots of home-fitted shelving sagging under the weight of books because the shelves are too thin for the span between the walls.

The following suggestions have been used and modified by me over the years very successfully in most rooms of our house. The basic principle is that you don't screw the shelf battens to the wall, you screw them to a plank you've fixed as an upright to the wall. As putting screws into wood is a lot easier than drilling holes in walls the whole job is quicker and neater. Of course you still have to drill some holes, but not half as many as in the traditional method. Here's an example:

Click to continue reading Easy Bookshelves for an Alcove.

The Making of the British Landscape

2010-05-29T16:20:00.009+01:00

I’ve just finished reading the 800-odd pages of The Making of the British Landscape (ISBN 9781846142055) by Francis Pryor, who many will know from his TV appearances on Time Team, as well as Britain BC and Britain AD, which he adapted from his books of the same name for Channel 4 television. He was a field archaeologist for many years, specialising in the Fenland area of eastern England, and best known for his work at Fengate, Cat’s Water, and subsequently at Flag Fen, on the edges of Peterborough. Previously President of the Council for British Archaeology, he now divides his time circannually between writing, broadcasting, and sheep-farming.

The title echoes W G Hoskins’s The Making of the English Landscape, first published in 1953, which I read when I was a teenager. It made quite an impact on me, and I have been interested in the development of these countries’ landscapes (my interest is also in Wales and Scotland) ever since.

Hoskins wasn’t much help with towns and cities, and I sometimes struggled to apply the ideas from his book to the landscape I was looking at, it all seemed so much more complicated, the land being – that wonderful word – a palimpsest of thousands of years’ changes. To be fair to Hoskins, he was inventing a new discipline, in effect, making it up as he went along, and we know so much more, and have so many more scientific techniques, nearly sixty years later. Online resources now mean that some areas of the country can be researched using the Historic Environment Records, Extensive Urban Surveys, Historic Character Assessment Reports, or a more specific example, the Cornwall Industrial Settlements Initiative. But all this new information needs fitting into the larger context to fully understand it.

So a new book on the subject, a big fat one at that, is much to be welcomed. With the subtitle ‘How we have transformed the land from prehistory to today’, the book is arranged chronologically, and its scope is vast – starting with the retreat of the ice, Palaeolithic hunters, and rising sea levels in the Mesolithic flooding the plains and wetlands of Doggerland to create the North Sea and English Channel, taking us through to the present-day ‘Sat Nav Britain’. As Francis says, taking us from one time of major climate change to another.

There is a lot of historical and archaeological information to put things into context here; obviously very strong on the archaeology, but also covering, inter alia, architecture, industrial archaeology, garden history, geology, and planning policy. As usual, Francis doesn’t shrink from taking a polemical view, and if that stimulates debate, for example about planning or industrial agriculture (or soil-mining as I think of it), then so much the better.

Our modern landscape is strongly influenced by the underlying geology, soil, and what went before. Learning to unpick the details is enjoyable, making a walk an informative and interesting activity, rather than a pointless ramble. I’ll never have enough knowledge to be a Stewart Ainsworth, but this book provides the material to enrich any walk, urban or rural.

With its enormous breadth in time and subject matter, and covering the whole of Great Britain in varying amounts of detail, I can’t imagine anyone not gaining a lot from reading this book. It’s well-illustrated with maps, figures, colour plates, and monochrome photos (which could perhaps have been reproduced more clearly, but are far better than those in the proof copy I saw). There are copious endnotes, a ‘further reading’ section, a bibliography, a glossary and an excellent index. It’s a proper size, too, quarto rather than a large coffee-table book.

There is more information and a short interview with Francis on the Penguin website, and he’s at the Hay Festival on June the 3rd.

The Book and the Avant Garde Exhibition

2010-05-27T10:18:00.005+01:00

For more information contact info@books4looks.co.uk or go to Books4Looks website.

Books4Looks is co-owned by ibooknet member Marijana Dworski.

Stoke Newington literary festival 2010

2010-05-26T14:17:00.004+01:00

Stoke Newington’s first ever literary festival is from 4th to 6th June 2010. London’s historic home to radical writers, thinkers and dissidents plays host to a diverse array of today’s most interesting authors and poets.

Those appearing include science fiction writers China Mieville and Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Orange Fiction Prize Shortlister Monique Roffey, politicians Tony Benn amd Diane Abbott, poets John Hegley and Katy Evans-Bush, Beer Writer of the Year Pete Brown hosting an event in his local The White Hart, and media favourites Jeremy Hardy and Phill Jupitus.

You can follow Stoke Newington literary festival on twitter.

JG Farrell wins 1970 'lost' Booker Prize

2010-05-20T09:58:00.006+01:00

The Liverpool born author J. G. Farrell has won the 1970 'lost' Booker Prize with his novel Troubles set in Ireland in 1919, just after the First World War and against the growing tension in the move for Irish independence.

Farrell, who died in an accident in 1979, also won the 1973 prize for The Siege of Krishnapur. Had Troubles actually won in 1970, Farrell would have become the first author to win the Booker twice.

Ibooknet member and Irish books specialist Karen Millward, has several copies of Troubles in stock at the time of writing.

There are two books on Farrell by Lavinia Greacen - J. G. Farrell the Making of a Writer (Bloomsbury , 1999) J. G. Farrell in His Own Words Selected Letters and Diaries (Cork University Press, 2009) which might interest those intrigued by this writer whose reputation continues to grow thirty years after his death.

Local Literary Connections

2010-05-18T19:35:00.009+01:00

Local Literary Connections by Nigel Smith of Bagot Books

I was pondering local literary connections and people’s need to find them the other day. Some places seem steeped in literature – the west of Surrey seems to have had a lot of well-known writers living there, whereas the area of Surrey I live in doesn’t. The only author of note (that I am aware of) that ever lived in Ashtead was Beverly Nichols, and his Merry Hall trilogy is a fictionalised account of his time here.

This doesn’t stop people finding as many tenuous connections as they can. For example:

Daniel Defoe : went to school in Dorking.

George Eliot : used to enjoy walking near Dorking.

Charles Dickens : stayed at a hotel in Dorking and the town is mentioned in The Pickwick Papers.

Jane Austen : set The Watsons in Dorking (Austen almost certainly would have visited the town as she lived for a while in Bookham, which is only a few miles away), and, the most famous Dorking literary connection of all: eponymous Emma has a picnic on Box Hill.

George MacDonald : he did actually live in Ashtead, although only for a few months - he came here to die and had his funeral here. I don’t think he ever put pen to paper while he was here, unless it was to sign his will.

The writer mentioned most often, and the one most local people seem to have heard of, in connection with Ashtead, is Samuel Pepys. He has a small cul-de-sac named after him. Now, Pepys lived in London and Brampton in Huntingdonshire, but his cousin had lived in Ashtead (it is speculated that Park Farm was his house) and the young Samuel visited his family there. He came to Ashtead at least twice during the period he was writing his diary, but didn’t seem to think much of it.

25^th July 1663 [He had come to take the waters at Epsom but there was no room available so] “I went towards Ashsted, and there we got a lodging in a little hole we could not stand upright in. While supper was getting I walked up and down behind my cosen Pepys’s house that was, which I find comes little short of what I took it to be when I was a little boy.” The other visit mentioned in his diary, in 1667, involves Samuel bringing some friends to show them his old haunts, but he was unable to find the footpaths through the woods he remembered from his childhood, and he sprained his ankle badly as well. That’s about the sum of Pepys’ Ashtead connection. And for Ashtead, that’s it really.

However, there are a couple of local literary heavyweights with stronger connections. Jane Austen’s writing was influenced by that of Frances (Fanny) Burney (1752-1840), who lived for some time at Westhumble near Dorking. She was a friend of Samuel Johnson (Hester Thrale introduced them), and she wrote of their meetings in her Diary. She spent five years of her life (1786-1890) “her talents wasted in the folding of muslins” as Horace Walpole put it, as Second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte. And then, while staying with her sister Susanna Phillips near Westhumble, she visited the French émigrés living at Juniper Hall at Mickleham – refugees from the French Revolution – and met a General Alexandre D'Arblay, who she married in 1793 at St Michael’s Church, Mickleham.

Fanny wrote a number of plays (mostly unperformed), four novels (Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla, and The Wanderer), but is probably best known for her Diary which was published posthumously in 1841.

Not far at all from Fanny Burney’s Camilla Cottage is Flint Cottage. Here, one of my favourite Victorian novelists lived and worked: George Meredith (1828-1909). He married Thomas Love Peacock’s daughter, a widow, who ran off with a Pre-Raphaelite painter nine years later. She died in 1861 and Meredith later married again, moving to Surrey.

Flint Cottage sits in a hollow at the foot of the dip slope of Box Hill, and a Swiss-style chalet in the garden still exists; here Meredith used to write and entertain his friends (including Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and J M Barrie). William Sharp described it as

“a little brown wooden house of the simplest, but to many friends richer in ardent memories than any palace in treasures … with its outlook down grassy terraces and pansied garden-rows across to the green thorn-stunted slope of Box Hill, and its glimpse leftward up that valley where still in nightingale-weather may be seen in a snow of bloom the wild white cherry which inspired the lines:

Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry / Fair as an image my seraph love appears …”

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Diana of the Crossways, and The Egoist are among his more famous novels; Richard Feverel was his earliest, and it caused him problems for some years because of its sexual frankness – “I am tabooed from all decent drawing-room tables” he said. Later in life he advised Thomas Hardy not to publish a book as he felt it would jeopardise his career as a novelist – advice from the heart. My favourite title of all his novels is ‘The Shaving of Shagpat’, but the book itself is written in the episodic style of a humorous Arabian Nights and is, in my mind, his least enjoyable book.

The two things about his writing that stand out for me are the strong female characters in his novels, and in both his poetry and prose the intimate descriptions of the countryside settings – often Surrey or the Thames, but various other parts of England and on the European mainland also.

George Meredith left Flint Cottage to the National Trust, presumably expecting them to keep it in trust in perpetuity. However, last year the 99-year lease was for sale for £1.35 million.

But all this begs my original question, which was why people need to find literary (and televisual, for that matter) connections? I presume 'Shakespeare's Country' was the original, but now as well as Hardy's Wessex we have Cookson, Heartbeat, and Emmerdale Countries, Ian Rankin's Edinburgh, and so on. It's understandable that people would like to know or visit the country that a particular novel is set in - Antony House, the Cornish National Trust property which was the location for the Tim Burton Alice film, has seen visitor numbers swell tenfold. Notwithstanding whether this is a Good Thing, why are people so desperate to find some famous association (however slight) with their home town?

Sweet Disorder in the Balkans

2010-05-06T20:37:00.009+01:00

Sweet Disorder in the Balkans by Marijana Dworski

A story of how book-dealers very often buy rather more than books, and a warning that perhaps they shouldn't or how the Lady Sybil Stewart collection came into her possession.

Embroidery, knitting, weaving and sewing are all pass-times, for which I am psychologically and constitutionally unsuited. I do not have the patience, the dexterity or the eye for detail to even consider embarking on these particular art forms. However, I love traditional textiles, especially those of the Balkans and the Near East, and rarely come home from abroad without some woven or embroidered 'piece' in my luggage.

Over the course of years selling books on Southeastern and Central Europe, I have had many requests for books on Hungarian, Polish and Balkan embroidery and costume. All these countries, particularly post World War II, produced publications in their own languages on the subject and many are profusely illustrated with photographs from ethnographic collections.

However, useful as these books are as works of reference, they cannot compare with the charming illustrated books on costume issued almost throughout the history of publishing. One of my particular favourites, and now of course so very hard to find, is one of Frederic Schoberl's series on the 'World in Miniature', published in the early nineteenth century. My personal copy of "Illyria and Dalmatia" (1821) is a charming two volume book in 16mo and in a later but very sympathetic half-calf binding with gilt decorated raised bands to the spine. The book comprises 32 hand-coloured engravings and short (rather subjectively viewed) texts on the various inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsular in their traditional outfits.

Romanian (or Rumanian or Roumanian) folk costume and craft was popular amongst the Bohemian set in 1920 and '30s London and the rather scandalous, Queen Marie of Romania, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, forged many links between the two countries. Books on Romanian costume, Romanian craft and Romanian folk lore published at the time are not uncommon with Studio's 1929 Peasant Art in Roumania being a good early example. The Romanians themselves also published books on folk art for the foreign market both before and after World War Two. Banateanu et al's lavish work: 'Folk Costumes, Woven Textiles and Embroideries of Rumania' (1958) is a typical example and an excellent source of reference.

Despite the plethora of publications on the area since Victorian times, good libraries on the Balkans are scarce and some years ago, I was tempted to the West Highlands to view the books of a family who had had close connections, both personal and diplomatic, with Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. The owner of the books, one of those 'redoubtable' English ladies was now old and unable to live alone in her Highland home. The house was being sold. The books themselves were interesting, albeit somewhat damp but there were few of value. It was just as I was taking my leave that the daughter of the family, threw open the lid of a large chest and exclaimed: "What shall I do with these?" It was a huge chest and brimful with traditional Yugoslav costume and other textiles. What an offer. I bought the lot. Refusing the offer of the chest itself, I drove the five hundred miles home barely able to see out of the back for coloured and patterned materials. I showed them off to all my friends; the embroiderers and weavers amongst them exclaiming at the detail and marvelling at the antique items: tiny and encrusted with gold thread. Another friend lent me an Edwardian tailor's dummy and a traditional Croatian dress became a symbol of my business and a tourist destination in Hay. But what to do? You can have too much of a good thing. My floors are already covered in Kilims, my walls have hangings galore and my sons won't wear the dresses. Some three years later having done little with this gorgeous collection - moving it occasionally from spare-room to attic and back, I feel it is time for Sybil Sturrock's textiles to leave my hands.

You can view Marijana's books on the Balkans here.

Balkan Costume and Textile Collection for sale

2010-05-06T18:45:00.010+01:00

Balkan Costume and Textile Collection for sale from Marijana Dworski:

A variety of textiles from the former Yugoslavia collected and preserved by Lady Sybil Stewart from 1930s to 1970s.

Following in the footsteps of Edith Durham and conforming to a tradition of feisty female aficionados of the Balkans Sybil Stewart, nee Sturrock, loved Serbia and its surrounding regions. Married to the diplomat, Sir Dugald Stewart (16th of Appin), their term of office in the 1970s was not the first time she had lived in Yugoslavia. Most notably we find that: "WAAF wireless operator Sybil Sturrock was parachuted into Yugoslavia, where she worked with the partisans until they joined with the Red Army and liberated Zagreb" ('The WAAF' by Beryl Escott 2003, Oxford. Shire Press). Dugald and Sybil married in Belgrade in 1947. Serbia, the Balkans and the Near East have long been close to the heart of a particular type of British elite and the Stewarts counted amongst their acquaintances both Fitzroy Maclean and Wilfred Thesiger.

Collecting far and wide in the former Yugoslav, both before and after World War II, Sybil Stewart put together a magnificent collection of 'Yugoslav' costume and textile. Many of these items are antiques featuring typical heavy ornamental embroideries. Even those pieces made in a more modern era and of modern stuffs retain the old patterns and weaves.

Our collection consists of some 150 items, 85 of which are garments or elements of traditional costumes. As well as tablecloth and napkin sets, hangings, throws, woollen bags and other woven or embroidered textiles, other items include a numbered of carved ornaments, some 9 books on embroidery and textiles in Southeastern Europe and a number of dolls in traditional costume. A letter, relating to this collection, from Jennifer Scarce (author of 'Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East' (1987) and one-time curator of Eastern Cultures at Glasgow's Royal Museum of Scotland) is also present.

Offers in the region of £2,875. More details and photographs available. Delivery within the United Kingdom, free. Please contact:

Marijana Dworski
21, The Meadows
Hay-on-Wye,
Via Hereford HR3 5LF
United Kingdom.

http://www.dworskibooks.com/.
info@dworskibooks.com
(+44) 01497 820 200

Select Bibliography:

Allcock, John B. and Young, Antonia. Black Lambs and Grey Falcons: Women Travellers in the Balkans. 2nd rvsd. ed. 2001. Berghan

Banateanu, Tancred, Focsa, Gheorghe, Ionescu, Emilia. Folk Costumes, Woven Textiles and Embroideries of Rumania. 1958: State Publishing House for Literature and the Arts

Durham, M. E. High Albania. 1909. London, Arnold.

Durham, M. E. Some Tribal Origins, Laws & Customs of the Balkans. 1928. London Allen & Unwin.

Plese, Adela. Hrvatski narodni ornamenat. 1944. Zagreb.

(Radaus-Ribaric, Jelka) Croatian Folk Embroidery. 1978. Zagreb.

Scarce, Jennifer: 1987. London and Sydney. 'Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East' Unwin Hyman

Start, Laura The Durham Collection of Garments and Embroideries from Albania and Jugoslavia presented to the Bankfield Museum by Mary Edith Durham ... A description. With notes by M. Edith Durham, etc (Bankfield Museum Notes. ser. 3. no. 4.) 1939

Tilke, Max: The Costumes of Eastern Europe. 1926, London. Benn Ltd.

Thornton, Philip. Dead Puppets Dance. 1937. London. Collins.

Varagnac, Andre & LePage-Medvey, E. National Costumes: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia. 1939. London. Hyperion

You can view Marijana's books on the Balkans here.

Book of the Week

2010-04-29T17:39:00.004+01:00

A Fine Manuscript Commonplace Book of poems along with 21 pen and ink drawings of birds, insects and flowers

Large quarto, 66 pages in total have been used, the rest are blank. There are 21, fairly accomplished, (probably) pen and ink drawings of birds, insects and flowers, some of which are full page. There are also a couple of other illustrations and a few silhouettes. Along with the drawings are numerous poems, all appear to be in the same hand and have copied from a number of sources, many of them are on a botanical theme. There is no indication of who owned or compiled this manuscript. The paper is watermarked, J. Whatman, Turkey Mill and is dated 1821. Finely bound in full red morocco with gilt decorated borders to the front and rear and a full gilt spine.

Price: £495.00

From the stock of Simon French Books.

You can view more books on butterflies here and more books of nineteenth century poetry here.

Simon French Books at Bookfairs

2010-04-22T12:07:00.009+01:00

Simon French Books, who specialise in Modern First Editions, Literary Criticism, Art, History, and Philosophy, will be at two bookfairs in the coming weeks:

Devizes book fair (PBFA) on 1st May

Churchdown book fair (Independent) on the 2nd May

The copy of Umberto Eco, Reflections on the Name of the Rose shown is a Signed First Edition from Simon's stock: First edition and the first printing. Signed by the author on the title page. Near Fine in a Near Fine dustwrapper which has a light crease to the laminate on the cover. £125.00

You can view more books by or about Umberto Eco here.

Adrian Bell

2010-04-19T19:06:00.013+01:00

Adrian Bell by Roger Thomas of Aucott & Thomas

Adrian Bell was the author of 24 books, although the majority of them are only available second hand, and some of them can be very difficult to track down. Or, in the case of his two slim volumes of poetry, virtually impossible.

Adrian is best known for the trilogy of books that he wrote about his experiences of farming in the the 1930's. Beginning with 'Corduroy' which describes his decision to take up farming, and his first years apprenticeship; and continuing through 'Silver Ley', in which he buys his first farm; and ending with 'The Cherry Tree', the three books are a superb commemoration of a vanished way of life, the final years of horse powered farming, before the second world war and the ubiquitous internal combustion engine killed it forever. The trilogy stayed in print for a very long time, but the best edition, in my opinion and by general consent, is that which Bodley Head issued in 1948, as these included colour and black & white illustrations by the East Anglian artist Harry Becker. Becker had died in 1928, and he and Adrian never met, but the author recognised a kindred spirit, and the words and pictures complement each other so well that it is difficult to believe that they were never originally intended to go together.
The three books of the trilogy are now, thankfully, back in print again (but without the Becker illustrations) as part of the Faber Finds series.

With a General Election impending Martin Bell (Adrian's son), who became well known as the BBC's war correspondent, and did the integrity of the House of Commons a (sadly short-lived) favour by seeing off the Hamiltons at the Tatton by election, has been showing a higher profile. He has recently been giving talks about his new book 'A very British revolution' which is about the recent MP's expenses scandal, and has also been in the news regarding the poor standard of television news reporting.

Rather less well publicised are the talks Martin has given concerning his father's 1939 book 'Men and the fields' which was originally published by Batsford, but has just received a long overdue reissue by Little Toller Publishing This book is one of Adrian's best efforts and is very well illustrated by colour lithographs and drawings contributed by John Nash, who was a neighbour and close friend of the author. The reissued edition, for which Martin has written a preface, includes the illustrations.

As a long time enthusiast of Mr. Bell, and a member of the literary society which exists to celebrate his splendid books, I hope that more of them will soon be made available again. Anyone wishing to find out more about this excellent author should look out for his autobiography 'My own master', which is quite expensive in the Faber edition but is sometimes available at a lower price in the Country Book Club edition. There is also a biography entitled 'Adrian Bell: Voice of the Countryside' written by Ann Gander and published in 2001 by Holm Oak Publishing.

Here's a complete list of his books- those marked* are all currently (April 2010) out of print. All the dustjackets illustrated are from
the first editions

Corduroy: Cobden Sanderson 1930
Silver Ley: Cobden Sanderson 1931
The Cherry Tree: Cobden Sanderson 1932
Folly Field: Cobden Sanderson 1933*
The Balcony: Cobden Sanderson 1934*
Seasons: Centaur Press 1934*
Poems: Centaur Press 1935 and Cobden Sanderson 1935 (Limited edition of 30 copies)*
The Open Air: Batsford 1936 (A.B. edits)*
By Road: Cobden Sanderson 1937*
The Shepherd's Farm: Cobden Sanderson 1939*
Men and the Fields: Batsford 1939
Apple Acre: Bodley Head 1944*
Sunrise to Sunset: Bodley Head 1944*
The Budding Morrow: Bodley Head 1946*
The Black Donkey: Blandford 1949*
The Flower and the Wheel: Bodley Head 1949*
The Path by the Window: Bodley Head 1952*
Music in the Morning: Bodley Head 1954*
A Young Man's Fancy: Bodley Head 1955*
A Suffolk Harvest: Bodley Head 1956*
The Mill House: Bodley Head 1958*
My Own Master: Faber 1961*
A Street in Suffolk: Faber 1964*
A Countryman's Notebook: Boydell 1975*
The Green Bond Boydell: 1976*
A Countrymans Notebook, centenary edition: Adrian Bell Society 2001*

Enquiries regarding membership of the Adrian Bell Society should be directed to the Chairman: John Ford, at Apple Acre, Church Lane, Claxton, Norfolk NR14 7HY, phone 01508 480665

Shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010

2010-04-19T11:33:00.006+01:00

The newly announced shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2010 is:

*Brodeck’s Report by Philippe Claudel (MacLehose Press), translated from the French by John Cullen.

*The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck (Harvill Secker), translated from the German by Anthea Bell.

*Fists by Pietro Grossi (Pushkin Press), translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis.

*Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou (Serpent’s Tail), translated from the French by Helen Stevenson.

*The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami (Arabia Books), translated from the German by Anthea Bell.

*Chowringhee by Sankar (Atlantic Books), translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha.

One intrepid blogger RobAroundBooks: is reading all of them ahead of the announcement of the winner and you can read more about that here.

You can view lots of literature in translation from ibooknet sellers here.

The Forbes Fictional Fifteen

2010-04-17T15:16:00.009+01:00

The Forbes rich lists include the bizarre The Forbes Fictional 15. This is a list of the fifteen richest fictional characters:

"To qualify for the Fictional 15, we require that candidates be an authored fictional creation, a rule which excludes mythological and folkloric characters. They must star in a specific narrative work or series of works. And they must be known, both within their fictional universe and by their audience, for being rich.

Net worth estimates are based on an analysis of the fictional character's source material, and valued against known real-world commodity and share price movements. In the case of privately held fictional concerns, we sought to identify comparable fictional public companies. All prices are as of market close, April 12, 2010.

We reserve the right to bend or break any of our own rules--so yes, we know Uncle Sam and the Tooth Fairy are folkloric."

I rather love that the Tooth Fairy is on there despite obviously being real.

Topping this years Forbes Fictional 15 is Carlisle Cullen from the Twlight saga by Stephenie Meyer. Also on there is Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, and Artemis Fowl from the series by Eoin Colfer. but the others tend to be drawn from TV rather than literary fiction. You can see them all here.

The book shown illustrating this post is one of the Artenis Fowl series and this edition, signed by Eoin Colfer is from the stock of Stella & Rose's Books:

ARTEMIS FOWL THE ARCTIC INCIDENT
Published: Puffin Books., 2002
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardback , with Dustjacket
Inscription: Signed, Inscribed Or Annotated
1st, Black boards, silver title to spine., Book condition Fine, Dust jacket condition fine, SIGNED by author on title page.
Stock number: 582081. ISBN: 0670899631
£ 20.00 ( approx. $US 29.95 )

Pulitzer Prize winners 2010

2010-04-12T20:13:00.011+01:00

The 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners include:

Fiction - Tinkers by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press)

Poetry - Versed by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan University Press)

The literary prizes which are for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, and for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American poet, have been awarded since 1948 and 1922 respectively.

Previous distinguished winners include:

Fiction:

1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

and poetry:

1924: New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes by Robert Frost
1947: Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell
1954: The Waking by Theodore Roethke
1963: Pictures from Brueghel by William Carlos Williams
1982: The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
2009: The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin

Book of the Week

2010-04-12T18:18:00.004+01:00

Bill Badger's finest hour by B.B. (Denys Watkins-Pitchford)

Published: Hamish Hamilton, 1961
Edition: First Edition; First Printing
Binding: Hardcover

Very clean, tightly bound book which has a small bookseller's label at the bottom of the front pastedown, in a bright priceclipped dustjacket which has minor rubbing at the corners but no tears or loss. An exceptional copy of one of the rarer B.B. childrens books, Very Good in Very Good dust jacket
Stock number: 25167.
£ 375.00

From the stock of Aucott & Thomas.

You can view more books illustrated by B.B. (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) here.

They do it differently there

2010-03-09T20:12:00.014Z

They do it differently there: a few musings on the similarities and differences across a corner of the English speaking world by Charlotte Robinson of the Amwell Book Company

In my innocence I imagined second hand bookshops the world over to be quite similar. After all I have sold books to a great variety of foreign dealers over the years, and we all speak roughly the same sort of language. Over the past few years I have made a several trips to Canada, the U S A and Australia and have been fascinated to observe the differences, as well as the familiarities.

My mother’s grandfather arrived in Western Australia in 1830 at the founding of the Colony but I was born to an English father and I did not visit until after she died in 2005. All through my life Australia was present – my father-in-law to be was very taken aback to discover he might be welcoming someone on the wrong side for the Ashes. A bit of teasing on my part, as I was not a follower of sport. We had regular visits from a range of cousins and family friends, who seemed much the same as us.

I was brought up on Australian nursery songs, childrens’ books and magazines from the school of the air. I took an interest and passed some of the favourites on to my children. I knew about the wild flowers and the animals. I had the Australian abiding fear of snakes. We had numerous water colours of the bush on the walls at home and I understood most of the Australian slang, having met much of it at home.

Arriving in Perth I was surprised at how familiar the landscape felt. Perth is reckoned to be the most remote city in the world, being 1,000 miles from its nearest neighbour. In area terms it is by far the largest state in Australia but much of it is desert and the majority of the population are concentrated in Perth and the south west.

Most people live in sprawling suburban areas made familiar by ‘Neighbours’. Life is surprisingly similar and familiar, especially if you have more cousins than you can count, most of whom have done the regulation visit to Europe at some point in their youth.

It is only when you travel in the countryside, ‘the bush’ that you begin to understand the enormity of the task, and the bravery and foolhardiness equal measure of the early settlers. An interest in my family history and wanting to offset some of travel costs naturally led me to investigate the second hand trade in Western Australia – which is different to the Eastern states.
Through my family connections I have seen some truly wonderful libraries, principly majoring on Australiana. Over the years I have sold books quite well in Western Australia. Before setting out I did an internet search for bookshops and found it very hard to find many. Here I mean serious bookshops, not remainder merchants or the ubiquitous book exchange.

As far as I can understand there are only two proper bookshops left if WA, with perhaps a third in Freemantle that I didn’t manage to visit. This feels like a worryingly small number for a such a large geographical area, but hey! Its lightly populated and most people are doing outdoors sort of things.

Robert Muir’s Bookshop in Nedlands near the University is a lovely shop in a typical late 19 century Australian suburban house. It resembled the sort of shop, once quite common but now only found in a few provincial towns in England, or Wigtown in Scotland.

My visit revealed my hither to parochial attitude to books in English. I knew of course that many books are published in America, Canada and Australia as well as other English speaking parts of the world. American first editions being the bane of English modern first dealers, because of the differing and complicated conventions their publishers use. I knew that American literature catalogues were often a bit boring because of the unfamiliar authors whose works just did not cross the pond effectively. As similarly the American trade would hoover up many British authors and look with disdain on others who didn’t travel.

All that did not prepare me for walking through rooms and rooms of books none of whose authors were remotely familiar. I have now repeated this experience in other parts of Australia, Canada and the United States. It still comes as a shock, but is in direct contrast to the bookshops at the airports in these countries which are now almost interchangeable in their offerings.

This wealth of publications more than anything else gave me the sense of just how long these countries have been building their own separate identities and literary histories, thus making the familiarities a bit deceiving, particularly in Australia and Canada. The United States experience of difference is more understandable because its inhabitants come from a much wider European and Central American pool. So often in Australia and Canada you find people have one or more British parents or grandparents.

Technically I am a fourth generation Australian, a fact brought home to me on this visit. When checking out the bookshops before leaving I had noticed an Australiana rarity being advertised on the side bar of the website. ‘My Dusky Friends’ by Ethel Hassell. The title was a bit off putting but the name was familiar and I checked the family tree – the same name as a Great Aunt of mine, from whom I had inherited a minute share in some property via an Aunt. I checked the dates and my Great Aunt and the author had to be one and the same. Not withstanding the title I emailed to order the book and pick it up in Perth.

Manuscript lodged in the Mitchell Library, Sydney 1910, used by anthropologists but not published in this form until 1975

Thus I made myself known to Mrs Muir at Robert Muir’s. She inquired my Mother’s name and on the strength of her family name, another cousin or two, we were adopted as de facto members of Perth society. So much so that when I enquired what bus we needed to catch to return home she swept us off and drove us home.

‘My Dusky Friends’ turned out to be an account of Ethel’s relationship with the local aborigines and observations on their customs during the first few years of her marriage. At the age of 21 in 1878 she went to live on a sheep station four days ride from Albany in far South, the only white woman for a hundred miles or more. It was a profitable enterprise for many years but the homestead was very crude and life must been extremely challenging for a young middle class Victorian girl.

Ethel Hassell, nee Clifton

Albert Hassell

Her descriptions might be judged as patronising today but they are sensitive and thoroughly sympathetic, whilst recognising the realities of life for a stone age people whose whole way of living was adapted to survival in the harshest of environments. Her description of this tribe is almost unique because it records life before it was changed for ever by the coming of the white man.

Great Aunt Ethel had four children while at Jarramungup, and took great advantage of the opportunity while living there to study the wild life and plant life. She assumed that any plants the aborgines could eat would be suitable to vary their tedious diet and experimented with mixed success. After eight years the family moved back to Albany where she went on to have ten children in all, the majority of whom survived to adulthood.

Jarramungup – in 1965, originally it had a thatched roof

Albany has an incredible deepwater harbour and was the main entry to the colony in the gold rush years but had been sidelined by developments further north by Aunt Ethel’s death in 1933. It lives on in its very beautiful location living mostly on tourists. Not a paradise for books though, with one book exchange to its name.

Which brings me full circle to the books. I managed to buy this one and several other useful pieces of Australiana but the pickings were fairly thin. I knew the books and the libraries existed because I had gazed enviously at those of various cousins and friends. They all said they picked them up in local sales. Mrs Muir finally explained that much to her irritation many of the most sort after books simply to not pass through her hands. It is the custom for the University to hold bi-annual fund raising sales of donated books……and this is where most the books go, and how they change hands.

I understand that this is unique to Western Australia, both Sydney and Melbourne have a more familiar approach to bookselling with shops (albeit often in basements) and a round of bookfairs. The number of shops is also reducing, as with elsewhere because of the internet. New books are much more expensive than in the UK and I imagine this is accounts for the ‘book exchange’, common in Australia but rarely found here.

My opportunities for further adventures in the Australian book trade are likely to limited in the near future partly because of the state of the pound and partly the need for the cash to go on visits to Los Angeles where my son and family now live.

You can view Charlotte's stock on ibooknet here and books on Australia here.

The Amwell Book Company specialise in architecture, art and photography.
books.

World Book Day

2010-03-06T11:04:00.005Z

Well, not quite - that was apparently March 4th. The Times today have a voucher for World Book Day, which you can use to buy a book for yourself, and another to give away. To support this, they have a feature in which they've asked various of the great and good what book they'd buy, and what they'd give away.

I always have a brimming list of books I'd like to buy, but top at the moment is Horses and Soldiers: a Collection of Pictures Painted by the late Gilbert Holiday, edited by Lyndon Holden, and published privately by Gale & Polden of Aldershot in 1938. Sporting artist Gilbert Holiday died at the age of 58, having spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair after a hunting accident. His works are not as readily accessible as those of his contemporaries, such as Lionel Edwards: he illustrated relatively few books and many of his works were commissioned by the military. Neither did he issue many prints. As I don't have a copy of the great work, I can't actually illustrate this section with a picture of it, but here is a copy of something I do have, Moyra Charlton's Three White Stockings.

Gilbert Holiday was supreme at depicting the horse in motion: below is an plate from Moyra Charlton's Three White Stockings, one of the two books he illustrated for her.

Three White Stockings (Putnam 1933) and The Midnight Steeplechase (Putnam 1932) are the easiest ways to get hold of Gilbert Holiday's work: both are readily available.

As to what book I'd like to give, I have I suppose to do that rare thing and write about a book which is actually in print. I'd give Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which I found entirely engrossing. It points up the fact that history is, to some extent, a matter of how you interpret it. Whilst the facts of what Thomas Cromwell did are (in general) not in question, his motivation of course is. Having grown up with the belief, strongly shoved along by Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, that Thomas More was all things good, I enjoyed reading Mantel's shading of his personality into something altogether more complex, and Cromwell's into something much warmer than the clever efficiency I have always admired.

If Wolf Hall had sold out, I'd go for Francis Palgrave's Golden Treasury: I usually have a book of poetry on the go: being a lark, I fall asleep early and fast and often the only thing I can manage to read (and I can't go to sleep before I've read something) is a poem. Palgrave's Golden Treasury was the first anthology of poems I read, as it was our standard school poetry textbook. I still think the book is a wonderful introduction to poetry, and was delighted to find out it is actually still in print. It has been added to over the years, and now features a post war section.

Book of the Week

2010-03-01T12:46:00.007Z

110 YEARS OTFORD STATION 1882-1992
Published: 1992

Six b/w postcards of Otford Station in Kent. Contained in green and white envelope., Book condition Fine, C/w
Stock number: 811313.
£ 10.00 ( approx. $US 16.37 )

From the stock of Stella & Rose's Books.

You can view more books on Kent here.

Where the Surreal and the Modern March Hand in Hand: Russian Children’s Books

2010-02-24T18:54:00.012Z

Where the Surreal and the Modern March Hand in Hand in a World of Tractors and Typewriters: Russian Children’s Books by Marijana Dworski.

Early 20th Century Russian graphic design is an underappreciated and little known genre in this country, but is now gaining recognition. In the wake of a number of exhibitions on the Russian avant-garde and programmes on Russian art, it is certainly worth pursuing for pleasure and even for profit.

Daunting the Cyrillic script may be, but the rich and colourful tradition originating in the Russian popular woodcut prints (Lubok) of the 17th and 18th centuries gives these books an immediate charm and appeal. A deep empathy with nature and folklore, combined with strong colours and bold designs, set Russian book illustration apart from western European trends of the time. Book art after the 1917 Revolution certainly differed radically in style from what came before, but colour and a magical realism remain dominant features.

Certainly, conventional children’s books, like the tales of Moka and Mishunk (an elephant and a bear) existed, but the artist that many consider the greatest and most ‘Russian’ of book illustrators was Ivan Bilibin. A member of the influential Mir Iskusstvo (World of Art) movement, Bilibin was profoundly influenced by Japanese woodcuts as well as Russian vernacular wooden architecture and the folklore of the ancient Slavs. Having studied under Ilya Repin, he developed a distinctive style which became immediately popular. The ‘Skazki’ (fairy tales) and editions of Pushkin illustrated by Bilibin have become enormously collectable and, although he was so prolific, are now hard to find. In the 1970s, however, Progress Publishers of Moscow reprinted many of these books and, although not the ‘real thing’, they are undoubtedly worth tracking down.

One colossal figure in the history of twentieth century Russian graphic design is Dmitri Moor.
(Dmitry Stakhievich Orlov), known almost exclusively for his iconic propaganda posters inciting Revolution and Death to Imperialism. But, like all artists, he tried his hand at other forms of graphic design. A little known children’s book, illustrated by him and published in 1913, has come to light: the story of Chiki Chiki the Magpie. Again, strong colours dominate. The stark black and white of the magpie against the deep maroon background foreshadows the technique of his emotive political posters.

The 1917 Revolution caused huge upheaval, but despite a broken infrastructure and recurrent paper shortages, the nineteen twenties became the Golden Age of the publishing. The experiments of the Russian Futurists, and later, the Constructivists with type, design and the printed word served not only to spread the ideology of the Revolution but book illustration and design became a refuge to those who dared not dissent too explicitly. The post-revolutionary explosion in publishing catapulted the production of children’s books to new heights and, as ever, children’s books, like art, were not created merely to entertain. New Soviet publishing houses dedicated to producing books for children (DETGIZ, Molodaia Gvardiia, Detskaiia Literatura) churned out copies in their hundreds of thousands. As with most contemporary Russian publishing, low quality and acidic paper was used, ensuring an early demise. Few examples survive.

Propaganda was a major motivating factor throughout the Soviet period but the creation and design of children’s books was used both by the innovators and the disaffected. The surreal and the modern marched hand in hand in a world of tractors and typewriters. Vladimir Lebdev, one of the greatest graphic artists of the time, used a bold and assertive form of caricature employing a technique resembling cut paper images. Important for his poster design, he will also always be remembered for his collaboration with Samuil Marshak, children’s author and poet. Together these two extraordinarily talented individuals produced numerous children’s books many of which were published at the Raduga publishing house. ‘Tsirk’ or Circus is one of the most famous of these children’s books and was reprinted in the 1970s.

Later, post-war Soviet children’s publications draw on the diverse heritage of the enormous Soviet Empire, encompassing well over 100 peoples in fifteen republics. From the westernmost Baltic States through the Russian Steppes to Siberia and far Kamchatka, folklore, proverbs, customs and traditions are all incorporated in the captivating, illustrated children’s literature of the 1970s and 80s. Colour and form in Russian art still echo those days that shook the world, the heyday of the Russian Avant-Garde.

Book of the Week

2010-02-22T11:20:00.004Z

Historic carriage drawings, volume one (1): LNER and constituents by Nick Campling

Published: Easingwold, Pendragon Partnership, 1997
Edition: First Edition Thus
Binding: Hardcover

Very clean larger format hardback in glossy pictorial boards, as new, no inscriptions or signs of use. 128 pages, illustrations throughout, sources, bibliography, Fine
Stock number: 26635. ISBN: 1899816046

From the stock of Aucott & Thomas.

You can view more books on railways here.

More on the Lost Man Booker

2010-02-20T13:36:00.010Z

I recently edited my last post on the Lost Man Booker to add some links to reviews of two of the books. Some more information on another two titles.

Firstly, a bit more detail on Len Deighton's Bomber by Mike Sims of A Book for all Reasons :

Len Deighton the thriller writer and military historian, has written an epic fictional account of an RAF bombing raid on Germany in June, 1943, from the initial preparations in England, the briefing, take-off and the raid itself, and simultaneously the preparations and defences at the German target, the actions of the civilians, radar tracking personnel and the night fighter crews. The book was later dramatised by the BBC in several episodes broadcast in real time, as the action of the novel developed, over one day.

The first edition of Len Deighton's 'Bomber' looks like this:

Secondly, I have been attempting to read Down All the Days by Christy Brown. I have never read anything by Brown before, though I have of course seen My Left Foot staring Daniel Day-Lewis. I was looking forward to readin this as a result but frankly I found it unreadable. It has dated badly and I say this as someone whose reading is presominently in the past. Brown's style is poetic, if I am being polite, overly wordy if I am not; and the adolescent fantasies were so boring I just couldn't continue with the book. The portrayal of working class life in ireland is interesting but has I think been done so much better by so many other writers. In both subject matter and style then, I really don't think it has stood the test of time.

The first edition of Christy Brown's Down All the Days looks like this:

If you have links to books from the longlist that you ahve reviewed then please let me know and I'll add them.

Cambridge Centre for Children's Literature

2010-02-15T11:15:00.006Z

The University of Cambridge is opening a new Centre for Children's Literature. There are already other centres in the UK focusing on children's literature, but this one aims to study what children pick up from all forms of the written word, whether it be a book, a blog or a computer game.

illustration from The Vege-men's Revenge, Stella & Rose's Books

The Centre, headed by Professor Maria Nicolajeva, will be unique both because of the breadth of what it will study, and its desire to bridge the current divide between those who study texts from a literary point of view, and those who seem treat them more as a study in social science.

illustration from Rosine, Peakirk Books

Professor Nicolajeva said: "Everybody can remember a book or film from their childhood that played a role in shaping the way they understand the world around them. For children, these are often secret and sacred places that they can go to and we need to study them if we want to improve their education and development."

The Centre's current programme of teaching and research ranges from old favourites like Robert Louis Stephenson's Treasure Island to current authors such as J K Rowling and Philip Pullman.

Ibooknet has several children's literature specialists: Stella & Rose, Peakirk Books and March House Books all have wide general stocks. Charlotte Robinson at the Amwell Book Company stocks children's illustrated books, and Jane Badger pony books. Vanessa Robertson's Fidra Books publishes classic children's literature, and she also owns the Children's Bookshop in Edinburgh.

High Heels for Jennifer, from Jane Badger Books

Jottings of a "Blow-in" Bookseller

2010-02-13T19:37:00.016Z

Jottings of a "Blow-in" Bookseller in Ireland by Karen Millward

In days gone by the seaweed was cut at low tide with curved scythes. The people collected it and tied long strands into heaps and left it for the tide and wind to blow up the beach. This was a Blow-In- seaweed harvested and blown up on to the beaches of Ireland.

Why do people become "Blow-Ins", deciding to move from their native country? There are many reasons why non-Irish people live here in Ireland. A new life in a new country offers great attractions.

Naturally, Ireland is a beautiful country, where people are open and friendly and very welcoming to visitors. There are many famous and rich people who have made their homes here, they are never hassled by fans demanding their attention. West Cork is the home of many actors, entrepreneurs, musicians, film directors, who came here to enjoy the anonymity and tranquillity amongst people who had never even heard of them.

After much thought we decided to up sticks and move to live in Ireland. This done the panic began to set in, was this the right thing to be doing especially at our time of life. Once decided, house sold, books packed we were on the move and beginning to realise what an adventure we had embarked upon.

In September 2001 we sailed for our new life in Eire, we had owned a holiday home here since 1989 but this was the big move. For eight months we lived in our holiday cottage, very small and compact to say the least. Books were stored at our new home which was partially built with one room suitable for storage.

Computer was set up in a bedroom and every time I sold a book we had to get in the car and drive to new house only to find the book we needed was in a banana box at the bottom of a pile of six boxes.

We survived and in May 2002 we moved into our new spacious five bed roomed house, one room shelved out and books installed, the landing also shelved but the rest of the books stored in box’s. Our house is down an ‘Old Bog Road’ with mountains and a bog behind, it is in a peaceful and beautiful location.

At the top of the road you look across to the Sugar Loaf Mountain on the Beara Peninsular and the sea opens up on the lovely Bantry and Glengarriff Bay.

Sugar Loaf Mountain.

This is a very popular tourist area and next year it is hoped that it will become busier when the Cork-Swansea Ferry begins to run again.

Bantry is a bustling market town right on the edge of the harbour, every Friday there is a market in the town square with stall holders selling everything from fruit and vegetables to chickens and puppies, the first Friday of every month is usually the biggest market with more livestock and a vast variety of antiques and collectables, furniture, clothes, tools and even the fortune tellers are out in their caravans.

Glengarriff is a beautiful little village with the wonderful tropical Garnish Island just a short boat trip across the water, in the Summer it is packed out but around the end of September it becomes just a quiet little place once again.

A Peaceful Spot Glengarriff.

Selling books here is not so different as when I traded in the UK we were very lucky to begin with because our local village post office was just half a mile down our road but as with a lot of local village shops and post offices it closed down and so now we have to travel about six miles to post our parcels.

Speaking of post offices we have a very laid back postman named Pat and we get our post delivered to us wherever we happen to meet him be it at the local garage or at a road junction and some days even in the mail box, post reaches us with even the vaguest name and address on the envelope.

Life in Ireland did hold a few culture shocks but one just gets on from day to day and gradually settles into the everyday life of the local community. My biggest difficulty to begin with was the pace of life and the laid back attitude to things. On a Sunday night dancing commences at 10pm, this amazed me because most of the people have to work on Mondays. Most of the shops in town do not open until 10am and long lunches are frequent. Because we had been coming here for almost twenty years we did know many of the locals and so this made things much easier.

What we did find was that it was essential to get out into the community and as everyone knows the Irish love their music and dance and so we frequented the local hotel on Sunday evenings where they have live music and dance every week. As a keen dancer I soon was taught how to dance the Polka Set, Siege of Ennis, Two Step, Stack of Barley,Two Hand Reel, Irish Waltz and Quickstep (more skippy than the traditional).

CAPTAIN FRANCIS O’NEILL

The Irish love their music and dance, one famous local celebrity was Captain Francis O’Neill he was born near Bantry, West Cork in the Townland of Tralibane, in 1848 he was the youngest of seven children and is known to be the man who saved Irish music. It is said that he saved 3500 Irish songs for posterity. Every year at his home place in West Cork a festival is held to commemorate his birth. Captain O’ Neill later became the Chief of Police in Chicago. But it was the songs that he picked up from his parents and visiting musicians at the family home in West Cork that was to form the basis of one of the most remarkable collections of Irish music, published in the early years of the last century.

MICHAEL COLLINS

Another famous son of West Cork was Michael Collins (1890-1922), he was born at Woodfield, Clonakilty, Co. Cork 16th October 1890. He was an Irish Patriot and Revolutionary. When he signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, he remarked to Lord Birkenhead, ‘I may have signed my actual death warrant.‘ And on an August day in 1922 in the tiny hamlet of Béal na Bláth, that prophecy came true- Collins was shot and killed by a fellow Irishman in an ambush. So ended the life of the greatest of all Irish nationalists, but his vision and legacy lived on.

Myths and Legends

Many Myths and Legends abound in Ireland and the area where I live is no exception.
About a mile away is Priest’s Leap and anyone visiting Coomhola will be almost certain to hear of this site high up on the northern side of Cnoc Buí. The area is know as Cum na Leime " the mountain valley of the jump", or Léim a’tSagairt " the priest’s leap. Nowadays an iron cross marks the spot on the top of the mountain. During Penal Times, priests were perpetually hounded by English soldiers, as Roman Catholicism was outlawed, and on one occasion a miraculous jump was made by a priest in order to evade capture , there are many different versions of this legend. At Newtown on the outskirts of Bantry Town, a distance of nine miles away a stone plaque with the following inscription was erected.

Léim a’tSagairt Erected to perpetuate the memory of The Priest’s Leap
Tradition has it that a priest escaped his soldier pursuers by leaping on horseback across the Bay.

The marks on the adjacent rock indicate where horse and rider landed safely.

Erected June 1972.

This part of Ireland is steeped in history and everyday one learns more of local customs and events that have helped shape it. We consider ourselves most fortunate to have found this tranquil spot and appreciate each day spent here.

Karen Millward specialises in Irish books covering everything Irish and more. Also carried is a large general stock of quality books.

Or view Karen's books through the Ibooknet site here.

Tweeting booksellers

2010-02-12T09:56:00.009Z

I have been on twitter for a while as Juxtabook but last week I started a twitter account for ibooknet too. A number of ibooknet booksellers already had twitter acounts but as a result of our chats about twitter several more sellers have started tweeting.

Don't let the media hype about twitter put you off, if you haven't tried it, it is a useful place for picking up information. It is not compulsory to follow celebrities! One of our members, new to twitter this week, has written a post on his own blog about the usefullness of twitter. You can read Philip Lund's thoughts here.

So who might you follow if you were interested in books?

The British Library
Olympia Book Fair
Seven Stories
(children's book illustration museum)
CecilCourt

WW1 Poetry Archive

Booksellers inlcluding:

Blair Bookshop
booksellercrow
Tall Stories
DurnickBooks
RobbInnBooks
Farm Lane Books
Book Shop Sara

Authors including:

Michael Rosen
Paul Magrs
Aliya Whiteley
Marcus Sedgwick
Evie Wyld

Publishing folk including:

Eoin Purcell
Gallic Books
To Hell With Emma
Virago Books
Aliya Whiteley
Victorian Secrets
Oleanderman (Guardian of Whipplesnaith's Night Climbers of Cambridge)
Gylphi

And of course Ibooknet sellers:

March House Books
Books & Bygones
Stephen Foster
A Book for All Reasons
C L Hawley (aka Juxtabook)
Jane Badger Books aka Books, Mud and Compost
Lund Theological Books
Peakirk Books

and

Ibooknet

The Architectural History of Wordsworth's Grasmere homes

2010-02-09T13:30:00.007Z

A TALE OF TWO HOUSES
By Ellie Hunt and Adam Menuge

Saturday 6 March 2010, 3pm. The Jerwood Centre, with a tour of Dove Cottage.

This event will look at the architectural history of two of William Wordsworth's three Grasmere homes. Bristol University archaeology student Ellie Hunt will talk about the 'lost wing' of Allan Bank, of which she is also a former resident. There will also be a chance to see a short documentary film about her excavations, which have been carried out with National Trust support.

Dr Adam Menuge, Senior Investigator at English Heritage, will share the results of his recent architectural investigation into Dove Cottage in a talk and a tour of the building.

Many of the Wordsworth Trust's Winter Events are free but do require booking as places are limited.

To reserve a place please telephone: 015394 35544.

Book of the Week

2010-02-08T10:45:00.004Z

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

Published: London, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1912
Binding: Hardback

12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall. xi., 229 pp. Bound in a recent half deep red morocco with a gilt patterned paper to the boards. All edges gilt.. Book Condition: Fine. Binding: Half Morocco
Stock number: 8006.
£ 125.00 ( approx. $US 204.58 )

From the stock of Stephen Foster.

You can view more Lewis Carroll books here.

Cambridge Book Fair

2010-02-05T09:55:00.004Z

The PBFA'S 36th annual fair , East Anglia’s largest such event, takes place at:

The Guildhall
Market Square,
Cambridge.

Friday February 19,
noon - 6.00pm

Saturday February 20,
10.00 am - 5.00pm

Admission £1

Ibooknet members Peakirk Books and Simon French Books will be exhibiting. Peakirk Books specialise in children and illustrated books and Simon French Books specialise in Modern First Edition books, including many fine and signed titles.

Book of the Week

2010-02-04T09:38:00.005Z

Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali

Published: "London: Doubleday, 2006
Edition: First Edition
Binding: hardcover, with Dustjacket

1st edition. Blue cloth boards stamped in gilt on the spine. Fine in Fine dustwrapper.
Stock number: 12169. ISBN: 0 385 60486 6
£ 11.00 ( approx. $US 18.00 )

From the stock of The Glass Key.

You can view more modern first editions here and more books by Monica Ali here .

The Lost Man Booker Prize - Longlist

2010-02-02T11:56:00.017Z

The Lost Man Booker Prize - A One-off prize to honour books published in 1970

Have you read any of the long list? Any predictions for the shortlist?

In 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became, as it is today, a prize for the best novel in the year of publication. At the same time, the date on which the award was given moved from April to November. As a result of these changes, there was whole year's gap when many books, published in 1970, were simply never considered for the prize.

Now a panel of three judges has been appointed to select a shortlist of six novels from those books. They are journalist and critic, Rachel Cooke, ITN newsreader, Katie Derham and poet and novelist, Tobias Hill.

Their shortlist will be chosen from a longlist of 22 books which would have been eligible and are still in print and generally available today. They are:

o Brian Aldiss, The Hand Reared Boy
o H.E.Bates, A Little Of What You Fancy?
o Nina Bawden, The Birds On The Trees
o Melvyn Bragg, A Place In England
o Christy Brown, Down All The Days
o Len Deighton, Bomber
o J.G.Farrell, Troubles
o Elaine Feinstein, The Circle
o Shirley Hazzard, The Bay Of Noon
o Reginald Hill, A Clubbable Woman
o Susan Hill, I'm The King Of The Castle
o Francis King, A Domestic Animal
o Margaret Laurence, The Fire Dwellers
o David Lodge, Out Of The Shelter
o Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat
o Shiva Naipaul, Fireflies
o Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander
o Joe Orton, Head To Toe
o Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven
o Ruth Rendell, A Guilty Thing Surprised
o Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat
o Patrick White, The Vivisector

The list includes many distinguished writers whose books have stood the test of time including J.G. Farrell, whose The Siege of Krishnapur won the prize in 1973; Iris Murdoch, whose The Sea, The Sea won in 1978 and whose novels were shortlisted in four other years; David Lodge, who was shortlisted in 1984 and 1988 and chaired the prize in 1989; Muriel Spark, who was shortlisted in 1969 for her novel The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent; Nina Bawden whose Circles of Deceit was shortlisted in 1987 and Susan Hill, whose The Bird of Night was shortlisted in 1972 and who judged the 1975 prize.

The Lost Man Booker Prize is the brainchild of Peter Straus, honorary archivist to the Booker Prize Foundation. He comments, "I noticed that when Robertson Davies's Fifth Business was first published it carried encomiums from Saul Bellow and John Fowles both of whom judged the 1971 Booker Prize. However judges for 1971 said it had not been considered or submitted. This led to an investigation which concluded that a year had been excluded. I am delighted that, even in a Darwinian way, this year, with so many extraordinary novels, can now be covered by the Man Booker Prize."

Ion Trewin, literary director of the Man Booker Prizes comments, ‘Our longlist demonstrates that 1970 was a remarkable year for fiction written in English. Recognition for these novels and the eventual winner is long overdue.'

The shortlist will be announced in March but, as with the Best of the Booker in 2008, the international reading public will decide the winner by voting via the Man Booker Prize website. The overall winner will be announced in May.

This is the third time that a celebratory award has been created for the prize. The first was the Booker of Bookers in 1993 - the 25th anniversary, and then in 2008 with the Best of the Booker to mark the 40th anniversary. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children won both awards.

Have you read any of them? Any predictions for the shortlist? I have to confess to not having read a single one. A prize like this is a good catalyst to make me explore new titles. What do you think?

The Copy of Master and Commander illustrating this post is from the stock of
A Book for all Reasons. Stock number: 38949. ISBN: 9780007787524 £ 5.00 ( approx. $US 8.18) as is the copy of Head to Toe by Joe Orton Stock number: 36551. ISBN: 0749390298
£ 2.50 ( approx. $US 4.09 ). The copy of Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault is from the stock of The Glass Key 1st edition. Stock number: 82346. ISBN: 0 582 10134 4
£ 10.00 ( approx. $US 16.37 ).

Edited to add recent reviews of the Lost Man Booker titles (if you review any and want us to add an link please leave a message in the comments):

The Birds on the Trees by Nina Bawden reviewed by kimbofo on Reading Matters

'The Vivisector' by Patrick White reviewed by kimbofo on Reading Matters

Book of the Week

2010-01-25T11:55:00.007Z

The National Sports of Great Britain. With Descriptions in English and French. A New edition. by Henry Alken

Published: New York, D Appleton & Co, 1904
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Red half leather cover with red boards

100pp + plates :: 50 full colour plates :: 490mm x 310mm (19" x 12") :: 50 full-page engraved hand-coloured plates on subjects including hawking, hunting, horse-racing, shooting, fishing, baiting, and combating animals. Rare, VG : in very good condition without dustwrapper. Some rubbing and scuffing to leather cover. Top and tail of spine frayed. Top of spine with horizontal tear. Uncut pages. Teg. Slight foxed in places throughout the book on pages with text. Small section of worming at top of page from contents page through to the end of the preface which does not impinge on the text. All plates clean with tissue guards. Small tear to two of the endpapers (not affecting text or plates)
Stock number: L0403.

£ 1560.00 ( approx. $US 2553.10 )

From the stock of Barter Books.

You can view more books on shooting here, on hunting here, on birds of prey here, and horse racing here.

Poems, stories, food and fun

2010-01-19T11:32:00.000Z

Fund-raiser weekend for the York Literature Festival 22nd- 24th January 2010 at St Martin’s, York (next door to the City Screen)

Fund-raiser weekend for the York Literature Festival featuring poets, storytellers, York author John Gilham, ‘open mic’ sessions, and raffles of goods donated by York businesses and writers.

All proceeds will help stage the York Literature Festival (which is 18th-28th March 2010).
Come and join us for the whole weekend, or drop in when you have time.

For further information contact:
Pauline Kirk
pmk@pkirk304.force9.co.uk
www.penninepoets.co.uk

or Rose Drew
Tel. 07914 271871 or 01904 733767
rose@stairwellbooks.com

Mary Russell Mitford Lecture

2010-01-18T23:05:00.000Z

Fellow's Lecture - Mary Russell Mitford (Born in New Alresford Hampshire,1787) is perhaps best known in Austen circles as the woman who repeated the gossip about Jane Austen that called her both ‘the prettiest, silliest most affected husband-hunting butterfly’ and ‘the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of “single blessedness” that ever existed... a poker—but a poker of whom every one is afraid’.

Less often remembered is Mitford’s passionate defence of, and engagement with, Austen’s novels, shown in her letters (especially those of the 1840s to Elizabeth Barrett Browning), her literary autobiography Recollections of a Literary Life (1852), her Our Village stories (1824-32) and Belford Regis (1835). In this lecture, Dr Katie Halsey University of Stirling will focus primarily on the ways in which Mitford deploys her reading of Austen and other writers to position herself within contemporary literary and feminist debates.

To view the event poster click here (PDF).

Lecture Tickets: £10 & £7.50 for friends/students
6.30pm Reception with wine
7.00pm Lecture
To book, or for more info, call 01420 541010 or email info@chawton.net

To view the Chawton House website click here.

Ibooknet sellers stock many books on Jane Austen: you can view her works, as well as books about Jane Austen including literary criticism and biography.

This post illustrated by books from the stock of Stella and Rose's Books.

i. Mary Russell Mitford., Illustrated by C.O.Murray & William Henry James Boot.
OUR VILLAGE Published: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington., 1879
First Edition. Hardback. Stock number: 987187.
£ 50.00 ( approx. $US 81.83 )

ii. Mary Russell Mitford BELFORD REGIS Published: Richard Bentley., 1835 First Edition .
Hardback. Three volumes. Three-quarter green leather binding. Raised bands and gilt titles to spines. Marbled boards., Book condition VG, No half-title in Volume 1 but not sure it was ever present. Final blank leaves present in all three volumes. Spines very slightly faded but overall a handsome set of this rare first edition. Stock number: 576025.
£ 1000.00 ( approx. $US 1636.60 )

Croatian Tales of Long Ago

2010-01-15T09:09:00.001Z

Croatian Tales of Long Ago by Marijana Dworski

I am much too old to have loved or even been scared by Roald Dahl's B.F.G. My childhood giant was Regoč, and on our long summer-holiday car journeys from Britain to Yugoslavia I pestered my father to tell and re-tell the story of that kindly giant's adventures with Kosjenka, his little fairy friend.

The Giant and The Shoemaker's Apprentice.

Regoč is just one of the fantastical characters dreamed up by the Croatian writer, poet and children's author, Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. At home she was hailed as the Croatian "Andersen" and her stories have delighted children for generations. She was even twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in the early 1930s. Her most famous works internationally have been: 'The Brave Adventures of Lapitch', also translated as 'The Marvelous Adventures and Misadventures of Hlapić the Apprentice' (Čudnovate zgode i nezgode Šegrta Hlapića) and 'Croatian Tales of Long Ago' (Priče iz davnine).

Ivana Brlic Mažuranić

Ivana Mažuranić was born into an elite, highly educated and politically powerful family in Ogulin, Croatia in 1874 and through her marriage she became part of the prominent and influential family Brlic. Their family home was at Slavonski Brod (in Slavonia, Croatia) where much of both families’ vast library and archives is still stored. Writing and being published was second nature to her, as to all her family. However, it was not until the publication of “The Brave Adventures of Lapitch” in 1913 that she achieved real popularity and fame. Sadly, despite her success, her impressive literary career, her many children and privileged family background, Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was dogged by depression and ended her own life in 1938. But her name lived on and she has remained popular both in former Yugoslavia and abroad.

F. S. Copeland's Translation

Although I was brought up on my father's retold versions and sometimes loose translations of Brlić-Mažuranić's stories, I was lucky enough recently, and at some expense, to find the F. S. Copeland 1924 English translation of her tales. It was published in London by Allen and Unwin under the title of 'Croatian Tales of Long Ago', with the author's name transcribed as Iv. Berlic-Mazuranic. This is a sumptuous children's book, very much of its time, bound in bright yellow cloth, red ruled and decorated. The brown wrappers are printed in blue and feature a Kirin colour plate as an on-lay. The ten tipped-in plates as well as the numerous head and tail pieces and thirteen in-text illustrations are also all by Vladimir Kirin.

Vladimir Kirin

Although little known outside former Austria-Hungary, Kirin (1894-1963), a prolific artist and illustrator, who spent some time in London in the nineteen twenties, could well be called the Central European Rackham. Indeed his spiky representations of dwarf and wizard, fairy and imp, gnarled and twisted trees, seascapes and magical landscapes must certainly be influenced by Arthur Rackham, but also there are many hints that he knew the works of the Russian book illustrators of the time: Nicolas Roerich in particular and though stylistically different, many of his themes are shared with that most popular of Russian illustrators, Ivan Bilibin. Kirin collaborated on many of Ivana Brlić Mažuranić's publications and his works are still much collected both in former Yugoslavia and abroad.

Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić Today

My own connections with Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić stem from the marriage between my great- uncle Viktor Ružic and Ivana's daughter, Nada. So although not a 'blood' relative, her name has always been part of my life. It is in great part thanks to Viktor and Nada's son, a second Viktor Ružic, that her name has been kept alive and her works translated into more than 40 languages. To many of her foreign readers it was not clear that these 'fairy tales' were not just adaptations of the Slavonic myths: Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić 's Croatian tales and her other stories were all of her own manufacture although inspired and influenced by the rich folklore and history of the South Slavs. In the early 1970s the popular British children's television programme 'Jackanory' ran a series of her tales 'retold', understanding they were folktales and under no copyright obligations. Thanks to the energy and enthusiasm of Viktor Ružic II, the true origins of Croatian Tales were clarified and Ivana's works continue to be published under her own name. An adaptation by the Croatian editor Bulaja on CD-Rom is now available and apparently a computer game, too.

Ivana's great-granddaughter, Matilda, along with her family, continues Viktor's work in promoting her great-grandmother as well as care-taking the 8,000 volume library, vast archives and numerous antique artefacts and pieces of furniture inherited from the Mažuranić and Brlić families. These, along with an impressive collection of framed Vladimir Kirin originals, can be viewed at the Villa Ružic in Rijeka, Croatia. If you can't get there physcially, then do, please, visit virtually here and for more on Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić see here.

Some books available on the net by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić and other members of her family:

MAZURANIC, Ivana-Berlic: Croatian Tales of Long Ago: Allen and Unwin, London 1924. 1st English edition. Illustrated by Vladimir Kirin, translated by F. S. Copeland. Colour on-lay to dustjacket, 259pp., colour tipped-in plates, b/w in-text illustrations, (This is a very rare children's book and very collectable both in the English speaking market and the Croatian one. Only one imperfect copy lacking a dust-wrapper available on the net at the moment).

MAZURANIC, Matija: Pogled u Bosnu, ili kratak put u onu krajinu, ucinjen 1839-40. (A Glance into Bosnia, or a short journey to that land, completed 1839-40) xi+80pp., original printed card covers, Zagreb, 1842. Original edition, short print run. (This book is very rare in its first edition and sought after in Croatia and amongst any collectors of original travel writing in the Balkans. It was reprinted in the 1930s and it has also been translated into English)

MAZURANIC, Matija: Pogled u Bosnu, ili kratak put u onu krajinu, ucinjen 1839-40. (A Glance into Bosnia, or a short journey to that land, completed 1839-40) xi+80pp., printed card covers, Zagreb, 1938 Facsimile.

BRLIC-MAZURANIC, Ivana: Cudnovate Zgode Segerta Hlapica. (Original Croatian edition of The Marvellous Adventures and Misadventures of Hlapić the Apprentice) Zagreb 1921 reprint. Illustrated cover by Vladimir Kirin, 86pp. Early edition of this important children's story.

MAZURANIC, Ivan: The Death of Smail Aga. Translated by J Wiles, Allen and Unwin, London 1925, 1st English edition. Original printed wrappers, 63pp.. In very good condition, unusually so for a softback of this age.

MAZURANIC, Ivana Brlic: Fischer Palunko und seine Frau. Vienna, c. 1970. Illustrated chidlren's book, quarto. Nice copy.Miscellaneous translations of Ivana Brlic Mazuranic's childrens' stories published in 1970s by Mladost, Zagreb. (The stories were translated into a variety of languages)

Mazuranic, Ivana Brlic. The Brave Adventures of Lapitch: H. Z. Walck, New York, 1972. With dust-wrapper. Into English by Lorna Wood, with illustrations by Harold Berson.

You can view more books on Croatian language and literature here.

Val McDermid wins the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger 2010

2010-01-14T11:28:00.006Z

Bestselling author Val McDermid has been named as the recipient of this year’s prestigious CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, which honours outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing. The announcement has been made by the Crime Writers’ Association in recognition of Val’s work over more than 20 years.

The CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger is the latest accolade in a highly successful career which last year saw Val inducted into the Hall of Fame at the ITV3 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, whose partners include the CWA.

In 1995 she won the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year for The Mermaids Singing, which first introduced her readership to Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, and went on to become an international bestseller. Fever of the Bone is the sixth novel of this series which inspired Wire in the Blood.

She has won many awards internationally, including the LA Times Book of the Year Award. In 2007, she won The Stonewall Writer of the Year Award.

Val is a top 10 bestseller who has been translated into 40 languages, with more than two million copies sold in the UK and 10 million worldwide. She has written 23 bestselling novels and the popular ITV series Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green, was based on her books and ran for six series. A three-part ITV drama of Val’s A Place of Execution was broadcast in the autumn of 2007.

Margaret Murphy, chair of the CWA, said, “The CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger award acknowledges the work of an author who has made an outstanding contribution to the genre.

“Val McDermid is a worthy winner whose work has entertained and thrilled millions of readers as well as many more who have enjoyed the TV adaptations her books have inspired.

“The recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award is chosen by the members and committee of the CWA and is very much an honour awarded by the author’s peers and thus makes it special.”

The prize will be presented at a ceremony yet to be confirmed.

Val McDermid's website is here. In February, the paperback of Val’s bestselling hardback Fever of the Bone will be published by Little, Brown.

You can view books by or about Val McDermid here and crime fiction here.

Edward Fox in 'An Evening with Anthony Trollope'

2010-01-12T19:33:00.004Z

Edward Fox in 'An Evening with Anthony Trollope'
National tour of theatres

22nd January - 28th March 2010

An evening with one of Britain's most loved and most prolific authors Anthony Trollope . Edward Fox takes on the mantle of the novelist and brings alive some of his most loved characters for an evening no fan of Trollope's work will ever forget.

Dates
22nd Jan 2010 : Chipping Norton Theatre
27th Jan 2010 : Winchester Theatre Royal
28th Jan 2010 : Bishops Stortford Rhodes Centre
31st Jan 2010 : Stamford Arts Centre
2nd Feb 2010 : London Middle Temple
4th Feb 2010 : Lichfield Garrick Theatre
7th Feb 2010 : Keswick Theatre by the Lake
17th Feb 2010 : Bungay Fisher Theatre
18th Feb 2010 : Epsom Playhouse
20th Feb 2010 : Greenwich Theatre
25th Feb 2010 : Jersey Opera House
2nd Mar 2010 : Lincoln Drill Hall
3rd Mar 2010 : Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal
4th Mar 2010 : Basingstoke Haymarket Theatre
12th Mar 2010 : Barton on Humber Ropewalk Theatre
13th Mar 2010 : Richmond Georgian Theatre Royal
14th Mar 2010 : Mold Theatr Clwyd, Flintshire Festival
21st Mar 2010 : Kingston upon Thames Rose Theatre
25th Mar 2010 : Brecon Theatr Brycheiniog
28th Mar 2010 : Bath Theatre Royal - 2.30pm and 7.30pm

For tickets please contact the venue direct.

Book of the Week

2010-01-11T11:35:00.006Z

The Brontë Family with Special Reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë by Francis A. Leyland

Published: London: Hurst & Blackett, 1886.
Edition: First edition
Binding: Hard Cover

Two volumes complete. A highly regarded biography. Hard-to-find in this, the original, edition. Aims to redress the balance of previous literary portraits of Branwell in particular. Makes reference to other biographers, such as Mrs Gaskell, but the author's original research and interviews with those still living makes for much original and interesting material. Bound in original cloth. Internally very good, inner hinges starting to split but still firm. The edges of the cloth have some rubbing, the worst being along the top half of the rear outer hinge of volume 1, which is splitting. Both volumes are firm. Boards have bevelled edges with black borders; gilt titles to spines. Good+, sound copy.
Stock number: 4006.
£ 135.00 ( approx. $US 220.94 )

From the stock of C L Hawley.

You can view more books on the Brontes here, more books on Haworth here here and more books on Victorian novelists here.

PBFA Book Fairs

2010-01-08T11:24:00.002Z

YORK FAIR CANCELLED

The PBFA York book fair scheduled for Saturday 9th January HAS BEEN CANCELLED due to severe weather conditions. The PBFA apologises to anyone who had planned to visit.

LONDON HOLIDAY INN

This fair will go ahead as planned on Sunday 10th January

Leave at home all your guineas, ye who enter here

2010-01-05T19:03:00.013Z

A look at a Victorian bookshop by Orangeberry Books.

I have recently been reading Oliver Wendell Holmes' 'Our One Hundred Days in Europe' which I have had in my library for a long time, unread. In 1886 at the age of 77 Holmes accompanied his daughter Amelia on a tour of Europe, most of which was spent in England and Scotland and large part of that in London. One passage which I enjoyed was a description of his visit to Bernard Quaritch in Piccadilly - I do not know if it is well known but, anyway, here it is :

From 'Our One Hundred Days in Europe' published in 1887.

One thing, at least, I learned from my London experience: better a small city where one knows all it has to offer, than a great city where one has no disinterested friend to direct him to the right places to find what he wants. But of course there are some grand magazines which are known all the world over, and which no one should leave London without entering as a looker-on, if not as a purchaser.

There was one place I determined to visit, and one man I meant to see, before returning. The place was a certain book-store or book-shop, and the person was its proprietor, Mr. Bernard Quaritch, I was getting very much pressed for time, and I allowed ten minutes only for my visit. I never had any dealings with Mr. Quaritch, but one of my near relatives had, and I had often received his catalogues, the scale of prices in which had given me an impression almost of sublimity. I found Mr. Bernard Quaritch at No. 15 Piccadilly, and introduced myself, not as one whose name he must know, but rather as a stranger, of whom he might have heard through my relative. The extensive literature of catalogues is probably little known to most of my readers. I do not pretend to claim a thorough acquaintance with it, but I know the luxury of reading good catalogues, and such are those of Mr. Quaritch. I should like to deal with him; for if he wants a handsome price for what he sells, he knows its value, and does not offer the refuse of old libraries, but, on the other hand, all that is most precious in them is pretty sure to pass through his hands, sooner or later.

"Now, Mr. Quaritch," I said, after introducing myself, "I have ten minutes to pass with you. You must not open a book; if you do I am lost, for I shall have to look at every illuminated capital, from the first leaf to the colophon." Mr. Quaritch did not open a single book, but let me look round his establishment, and answered my questions very courteously. It so happened that while I was there a gentleman came in whom I had previously met,--my namesake, Mr. Holmes, the Queen's librarian at Windsor Castle. My ten minutes passed very rapidly in conversation with these two experts in books, the bibliopole and the bibliothecary. No place that I visited made me feel more thoroughly that I was in London, the great central mart of all that is most precious in the world.

Leave at home all your guineas, ye who enter here, would be a
good motto to put over his door, unless you have them in plenty and can spare them, in which case Take all your guineas with you would be a better one. For you can here get their equivalent, and more than their equivalent, in the choicest products of the press and the finest work of the illuminator, the illustrator, and the binder. You will be sorely tempted. But do not be surprised when you ask the price of the volume you may happen to fancy. You are not dealing with a _bouquiniste_of the Quais, in Paris. You are not foraging in an old book-shop of New York or Boston. Do not suppose that I undervalue these dealers in old and rare volumes. Many a much-prized rarity have I obtained from Drake and Burnham and others of my townsmen, and from Denham in New York; and in my student years many a choice volume, sometimes even an Aldus or an Elzevir, have I found among the trumpery spread out on the parapets of the quays. But there is a difference between going out on the Fourth of July with a militia musket to shoot any catbird or "chipmunk" that turns up in a piece of woods within a few miles of our own cities, and shooting partridges in a nobleman's preserves on the First of September. I confess to having felt a certain awe on entering the precincts made sacred by their precious contents. The lord and master of so many _Editiones Principes_, the guardian of this great nursery full of _incunabula_, did not seem to me like a simple tradesman. I felt that I was in the presence of the literary purveyor of royal and imperial libraries, the man before whom millionaires tremble as they calculate, and billionaires pause and consider. I have recently received two of Mr.
Quaritch's catalogues, from which I will give my reader an extract or two,to show him what kind of articles this prince of bibliopoles deals in.

Perhaps you would like one of those romances which turned the head of Don Quixote. Here is a volume which will be sure to please you. It is on one of his lesser lists, confined principally to Spanish and Portuguese works:--

"Amadis de Gaula ... folio, gothic letter, FIRST EDITION, unique ... red morocco super extra, _double_ with olive morocco, richly gilt,
tooled to an elegant Grolier design, gilt edges ... in a neat case."

A pretty present for a scholarly friend. A nice old book to carry home for one's own library. Two hundred pounds--one thousand dollars-will make you the happy owner of this volume.

But if you would have also on your shelves the first edition of the "Cronica del famoso cabaluero cid Ruy Diaz Campadero," not "richly gilt," not even bound in leather, but in "cloth boards," you will have to pay two hundred and ten pounds to become its proprietor. After this you will not be frightened by the thought of paying three hundred dollars for a little quarto giving an account of the Virginia Adventurers. You will not shrink from the idea of giving something more than a hundred guineas for a series of Hogarth's plates. But when it comes to Number 1001 in the May catalogue, and you see that if you would possess a first folio Shakespeare, "untouched by the hand of any modern renovator," you must be prepared to pay seven hundred and eighty-five pounds, almost four thousand dollars, for the volume, it would not be surprising if you changed color and your knees shook under you. No doubt some brave man will be found to carry off that prize, in spite of the golden battery which defends it, perhaps to Cincinnati, or Chicago, or San Francisco. But do not be frightened. These Alpine heights of extravagance climb up from the humble valley where shillings and sixpences are all that are required to make you a purchaser.

You can view more Oliver Wendell Holmes books here, and more books on Victorian London here.

This post is illustrated with DOROTHY Q Together with A Ballad Of The Boston Tea Party and Grandmother's Story Of Bunker Hill Battle by Oliver Wendell Holmes and illustrated by Howard Pyle. From From the stock of Stella & Rose's Books. Stock number: 712241. £ 38.00 ( approx. $US 62.19 )

Book of the Week

2010-01-04T12:33:00.006Z

THE WOMBLES OF WIMBLEDON - The Wombles at Work and The Wombles to the Rescue by Elisabeth Beresford

Published: Ernest Benn, London, 1976,
Edition: 1st thus,

1st thus, 134pp, frontis and numerous in text line drawings by Barry Leith and Margaret Gordon, pale green cloth lettered in gilt at spine, pictorial dustwrapper, an ominibus edition of 'The Wombles at Work' and 'The Wombles to the Rescue', a little rubbed and lightly bumped at extrems., edges sl. dusty, dustwrapper: unpriced, a little rubbed at extrems., repaired tear head of upper hinge, faint stain lower flap, very good in a good plus dustwrapper.

Stock number: 34615. ISBN: 051009600X
£ 16.00 ( approx. $US 26.19

From the stock of A Book for all Reasons.

You can view more Elisabeth Beresford books here.

Some blogging highlights 2009 part 3

2009-12-29T21:49:00.012Z

The next post up for my blogging highlights is a bit odd in that the interesting idea it starts is also abandoned. It is nonetheless interesting for that. Kristen at We Be Reading decided to start a re-reading challenge as so many of her followers seemed to read their books only once. Unfortunately this was confirmed by the fact that so few people participated in her challenge that she decided to abandon it.

I am a firm believer in re-reading. I would be. As a student and a teacher I spent a great part of my life reading a re-reading and re-reading again the same volumes, and I never tire of a good novel, how ever often I do this. As a bookseller of course I like people re-reading old favourites as it means they are often buying out of print books!

If you wonder what you would get out of re-reading then have a read of Kristen's posts on the subject and if you're interested then follow We Be Reading as she says that she will try again with the challenge in the spring when people might have more time. For further inspiration there is a good re-reading review on Shelf Love here.

My own favourite re-read is Middlemarch by George Eliot. I read it once every three years or so. It is about time I started it again. Comfort reads are often good re-reads such as old children's favourite (the Jill books, or Follyfoot, Honor Arundel's Emma books all spring to mind).

Do you have a favourite re-read?

Some blogging highlights 2009 part 2

2009-12-27T19:57:00.010Z

333 Short Stories You Must Read Before You Die is part of a great project on the blog Ready When You are CB. He is attempting to find the 1001 short stories to read before you die. Clearly lists of this sort are never definitive but the process of compiling the list is certainly a fun one to watch. He started this project with a list of just over 200 short stories and has got up to 333 with readers' suggestions. There are some great stories mentioned covering the expected such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" along side the less well know such as Graham Greene, "The Destructors", Shirley Jackson, "One Ordinary Day with Peanuts", Noel Coward, "Me and the Girls".

The compiling of this list is another great use of the blogging medium and a great boost for the little sister of the more glamorous novel.

The book illustrating this post is The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and other stories from the stock of A Book for All Reasons, their ref 35850.

Some blogging highlights 2009

2009-12-27T19:04:00.015Z

I thought as the year was drawing to a close that I would highlight some of the best posts that I have read on book blogs during 2009. First up is the wonderful dovegreyreader scribbles. DGR's deceptively chatty and modest style lightly covers a wealthy of literary knowledge and critical acumen. Her blog is read by every type of reader from the already dedicated literary type to those taking their first steps on the library pathways. DGR came up with a piece of blogging genius on Bloomsday this year. Ulysses by James Joyce is both admired and feared. It is extremely hard to finish Ulysses even for a reader with a literary background; for the lay reader more accustomed to joy-reading with Jane Austen or Dickens it can be a bit of shock. DGR's invitation to take all who cared to join her on an assault on "Mount Ulysses" was a brilliant and creative use of the blogging medium. So the intrepid team began in June at Base Camp preparing to read a section per month and convene on the 16th of each month to discuss progress. The aim was to complete the novel together by Bloomsday 2010.

It remains of course to be seen how many of DGR's readers will make it with her to the end of the novel. To start such a project in a public forum is a brave piece of blogging. DGR's words and manner might be gentle and designed not to frighten the general reader, but her critical skills are no less sharp and her literary standards no less high for all her colloquial tone.

More on my blog posts of 2009 tomorrow.

The book illustrating this post is a Folio Society edition of Ulysses Illustrated by Mimmo Paladino. Priced at £45, from the stock of Stella and Rose's Books their reference 809959.

You can view more books by and about James Joyce here

Book of the Week

2009-12-21T20:11:00.005Z

Elia Dresses, Illustrated by Walter Crane.

A MASQUE OF DAYS
Published: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1901
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardback

1st edition, Pictorial paper boards, cream cloth spine. Beautiful colour illustrations surrounding text throughout, printed on one side of the paper only. Unpaginated. 11.25 x 8.5"., Book condition VG, Spine and covers slightly rubbed. Corners worn. Name plate to front pastedown. Light foxing to endpaper and prelims. Contents clean. A nice copy.

Stock number: 731900.

£ 120.00 ( approx. $US 196.39 )

From the stock of Stella & Rose's Books.

You can view other books by or about Walter Crane here.

Books as Art and Art as Books

2009-12-18T15:07:00.010Z

Ibooknet member Marijana Dworski, specialist in out-of-print books on the Balkans and Russia, and Clare Keil, furniture and exhibition designer have combined their talents to present books as pictures for your wall in their new visionary project BOOKS4LOOKS.

"The wonderfully innovative graphic design of the 20th century, from the Russian Avant-Garde to the Festival of Britain, too often remains hidden in bookcases and on shelves." says Marijana. "The classic book-cover designs from the 1920s to 1960s are so striking, they are works of art in themselves, but as we love books too, we didn't want to just remove the covers and frame pieces of books. I've had books displayed on the mantelpiece, on window-sills for years, but until Clare put her thinking cap on, I just couldn't get my books on the wall". She adds.

Delighting in the bright bold colours of a series of large format children's books, the pastels and browns of a 'Modernista' Scheherazade, Eric Gill's distinctive black and white engravings and the now iconic oranges and greens of the Penguin paperback Clare and Marijana set about finding a solution for framing books as display items, whilst making sure that they remained intact and, ultimately, readable.

"We hope that the exhibition will inspire people to take a look at books from another perspective; as a beautiful object in itself, a quirky piece of retro, a statement of taste or just part of the décor. says Clare. "I've got these glorious 1960s cookbooks on my wall" although she admits that she doesn't actually get them down as they're in Welsh.

Offering a variety of display opportunities, some books are framed conventionally, whilst others can be easily removed from their frames and read. No book was harmed in the mounting of this exhibition!

Supplying both domestic and contract interiors as well as libraries and museums, Clare and Marijana will customise designs and source books or can supply from their current stock.

Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2010 Longlist

2009-12-16T11:16:00.000Z

One hundred and fifty-eight novels, from twenty-four publishers have been submitted for the 50th Romantic Novel of the Year Award, presented by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Eleven of the books were penned by male authors, a record number of men.

RNA Chair Katie Fforde said it was an impressive array of wonderful titles for the Association's golden anniversary year. 'There is really something for everyone and each one a gem,' she said.

A shortlist of six titles (to be announced on February 11th) will be selected and sent to the final judges.

This year's judges are Sharon Gurney, Senior Book Buyer at Sainsbury's, responsible for buying titles for both chart and range. She says romantic fiction is incredibly important to Sainsubury's "I'm delighted to be part of this judging panel and I'd really like to see the award acknowledged not just in the world of publishing but also by retailers and ultimately the consumer."

The author of two non-fiction titles, Alyson Rudd was a financial reporter before becoming a sports reporter, and ran The Times Book Club. She is pleased to be to reading novels that will take her mind off football for a few hours. 'I am looking forward to reading some of the very best romantic novels that will, hopefully, tug at my heart strings and offer a few surprises,' she said.

The third judge is Moira Briggs, from the literary website Vulpes Libris, who says there are few things quite as adept at lifting the spirits as a well-crafted romance. 'Although being asked to choose the best of the best is a bit daunting, I'm delighted to play a small part in raising the profile of a genre that comes in for far more than its fair share of slings and arrows.'

The winner will be announced on Tuesday, March 16th 2010 at the Award Luncheon at the Royal Garden Hotel, in Kensington.

The complete longlist of twenty novels(in alphabetical order of author):

The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison, Alma Books
Passion by Louise Bagshawe, Headline Review
Beachcombing by Maggie Dana, Pan Macmillan
Fairytale of New York by Miranda Dickinson, Avon (Harper Collins)
Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts by Lucy Dillon, Hodder & Stoughton
A Single to Rome by Sarah Duncan, Headline Review
A Mother's Hope by Katie Flynn, Arrow (Random House)
A Glimpse at Happiness by Jean Fullerton, Orion
10 Reasons Not to Fall in Love by Linda Green, Headline Review
Marriage and Other Games by Veronica Henry, Orion
The Glass Painter's Daughter by Rachel Hore, Simon & Schuster
It's the Little Things by Erica James, Orion
I Heart New York by Lindsey Kelk, Harper
The Heart of the Night Judith Lennox Headline Review
The Italian Matchmaker by Santa Montefiore, Hodder & Stoughton
The Summer House by Mary Nichols, Allison & Busby
One Thing Led to Another by Katy Regan, Harper
The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks, Little Brown (Sphere)
Last Christmas by Julia Williams, Avon (Harper Collins)
The Hidden Dance by Susan Wooldridge, Allison & Busby

You can view more romance fiction here.

With thanks to Camden Lock Books for flagging this up!

Jane Austen's First Publisher

2009-12-15T10:17:00.000Z

Jane Austen's First Publisher? Patrick Byrne Of Dublin by Margaret Rogers of Hessay Books

In January 1789 James Austen, Jane's undergraduate elder brother, started a weekly literary magazine 'The Loiterer'. It ran until March 1790, with the essays and short stories being written by James, his brother Henry, and college friends.

A humorous fake letter appeared in issue IX of Saturday, March 28, 1789. In it 'Sophia Sentiment', complains that the last issue of 'The Loiterer', written by her brother Henry, is dull and contains no subjects which could be of interest to young ladies.

SOPHIA SENTIMENT'S LETTER

To the AUTHOR of the LOITERER
SIR,
I write this to inform you that you are very much out of my good graces, and that, if you do not amend your manners, I shall soon drop your acquaintance. You must know, Sir, I am a great reader, and, not to mention some hundred volumes of novels and plays, have, in the two last summers, actually got through all the entertaining papers of our most celebrated periodical writers, from the Tatler and Spectator to the Microcosm and the Olla Podrida. Indeed I love a periodical work beyond any thing, especially those in which one meets with a great many stories, and where the papers are not too long. I assure you my heart beat with joy when I heard of your publication, which I immediately sent for and have taken in ever since.

I am sorry, however, to say it, but really, Sir, I think it is the stupidest work of the kind I ever saw: not but that some of the papers are well written; but then your subjects are so badly chosen, that they never interest one. Only conceive, in eight papers, not one sentimental story about love and honour, and all that. - Not one Eastern Tale full of Bashas and Hermits, Pyramids and Mosques - no, not even an allegory or dream have yet made their appearance in the Loiterer. Why, my dear Sir - what do you think we care about in the way in which Oxford-men spend there (sic) time and money - we who have enough to do to spend our own. For my part, I never, but once, was at Oxford in my life, and I am sure I never wish to go there again - They dragged me through so many dismal chapels, dusty libraries, and greasy halls, that it gave me the vapours for two days afterwards. As for your last paper, indeed the story was good enough, but there was no love, and no lady in it, at least no young lady; and I wonder how you could be guilty of such an omission, especially when it could have been so easily avoided. Instead of retiring to Yorkshire, he might have fled into France, and there, you know, you might have made him fall in love with a French Paysanne, who might have turned out to be some great person. Or you might have let him set fire to a convent, and carry off a nun, whom he might afterwards have converted, or any thing of that kind, just to have created a little bustle, and made the story more interesting.

In short, you have never yet dedicated any one number to the amusement of our sex, and have taken no more notice of us, than if you thought, like the Turks, we had no souls. From all which I do conclude, that you are neither more nor less than some old fellow of a college, who never saw any thing of the world beyond the limits of the university, and never conversed with a female, except your bed-maker and laundress. I therefore give you this advice, which you will follow as you value our favour, or your own reputation -- Let us hear no more of your Oxford Journals, your Homelys and Cockney: but send them about their business, and get a new set of correspondents, from among the young of both sexes, but particularly ours; and let us see some nice affecting stories, relating the misfortunes of two lovers, who died suddenly, just as they were going to church. Let the lover be killed in a duel, or lost at sea, or you may make him shoot himself, just as you please; and as for his mistress, she will of course go mad; or if you will, you may kill the lady, and let the lover run mad; only remember, whatever you do, that your hero and heroine must possess a great deal of feeling, and have very pretty names. If you think fit to comply with this my injunction, you may expect to hear from me again, and perhaps I may even give you a little assistance; - but if not - may your work be condemned to the pastry-cook's shop, and you may always continue a bachelor, and be plagued with a maiden sister to keep house for you.

Your's, as you behave,
SOPHIA SENTIMENT

In the 'The Book Collector' in Summer 1966, Sir Zachary Cope first proposed that this letter was written by the 13 year old Jane and this theory (discussed in The Report of the Jane Austen Society of 1966) is now generally accepted. The letter is lively, witty and inventive, and typical of Jane's style.

If Jane really was 'Sophia Sentiment', it may be that her first ever appearance in printed book form was at the hands of a Dublin 'pirate'.

When weekly publication ceased, James Austen had published the bound-up remaining sheets of 'The Loiterer' in Oxford but in 1792 an edition was printed in book form by P. Byrne and W. Jones of Dublin. It seems unlikely that James Austen would have agreed to publish such a modest looking edition, so this was almost certainly an unauthorised 'pirate' edition, intended only for sale in Ireland.

At that time, the lead publisher, Patrick Byrne, was around 50 years of age and the biggest publisher in Dublin with over 150 titles to his credit. As a Catholic, his business was hampered by discrimination, and he became involved in work for parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation.

His subsequent career was dramatic. In 1793 his house and shop, weakened by a neighbouring fire, suddenly collapsed into rubble, which may be why this little book is so rare. He was forced into a long court battle with his insurer to receive any compensation and in 1798, almost as soon as his business had recovered, he was accused of involvement in a plot against King George III instigated by Edward Fitzgerald.

He was arrested, accused of high treason and consigned to Newgate gaol, where he became ill. It was only in June 1800 that his petitions for release were finally successful and later that year he left Ireland for ever, for Philadelphia, which had been one of the main centres of the American Revolution. He ran a successful printing business there until his death in 1814, in the middle of the Anglo-American War.

Patrick Byrne's dramatic life seems a long way from the serene and orderly existence of Miss Austen of Chawton Cottage but it seems that Jane Austen's first appearance in book form may have been at the hands of a 'treasonous rebel'.

Ibooknet sellers stock many books on Jane Austen: you can view her works, as well as books about Jane Austen including literary criticism and biography.

Book of the Week

2009-12-14T10:07:00.002Z

DAVY CROCKETT
Published: Strato, Oadby, Leicester, ND,

Paperback, unpaginated [48pp], coloured ills. throughout,
stapled coloured pictorial paper wrappers, magazine format about 10 x 7 inches, in the Classics Illustrated series, No. 129 (HRN 129), cover price 1/3, text in English, printed in Republic of Ireland, a little rubbed at extrems., small nick fore-edge upper wrapper and light creasing to wrappers, slight rusting to staples, pages lightly tanned, very good.

Stock number: 38837.
£ 18.00 ( approx. $US 29.46 )

From the stock of A Book for all Reasons.

You can view more books on the American West here.

The Collector as Artist: Lady Eccles and Oscar Wilde

2009-12-08T10:10:00.000Z

British Library Lecture

The Collector as Artist: Lady Eccles and Oscar Wilde.

by John Stokes, Emeritus Professor of Modern British Literature in the Department of English at King's College London

Venue: Monday 11 January 2010 at 18.00 at the British Library Conference Centre 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.

Taking Lady Eccles' magnificent donation of almost 2,000 items relating to Oscar Wilde and his circle to the British Library as its example, the talk will explore the ways in which the creativity of the collector can, in turn, inspire the imagination of the scholar.

Mary, Viscountess Eccles (1912 - 2003) collected an outstanding wealth of material relating to Wilde including manuscripts (correspondence, works, etc.) printed books (amongst them a number of presentation copies and books from Wilde's own library) and a wide range of ephemera which was bequeathed to the British Library.

The collection which is now available through the Library's online catalogues.

John Stokes and Dr Mark Turner, also of King's College, are now editing Wilde's journalism for the Oxford English Texts edition of the Complete Works.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.

Attendance is free, but please register your name with Teresa Harrington at the British Library teresa.harrington@bl.uk

The book illustrating this post is:

Oscar Wilde
Fairy Tales
Published: London, The Bodley Head, 1978
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Hardback

8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Tall. Bound in quarter tan morocco, with a red title label. Illustr.: Mozley, Charles. Book Condition: Near Fine. Binding: 1/4 Morocco
Stock number: 35548.
£ 95.00 ( approx. $US 151.91 )

From the stock of Stephen Foster

Book of the Week

2009-12-07T10:27:00.004Z

Dutch Dresses - Anon
Published: Netherlands, van Rijkom Bros, 1900

Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover

Clean hardback tightly bound in red cloth with pictorial decoration, cloth has minor rubbing at corners, no inscriptions. Contains 12 hand tinted postcards which open concertina style, cloth webbing is sound. No date, but stylistically late Victorian; 1880-1900 at a guess, Very Good

Stock number: 23087.
£ 45.00 ( approx. $US 71.96 )

From the stock of Aucott & Thomas.

You can view other books on the history of clothes here.

Peakirk Books at Norwich Book Fair

2009-12-03T10:34:00.008Z

Peakirk Books, who specialise in children's literature, are exhibiting stock at the PBFA Book Fair at Norwich on Saturday 5th December.

NORWICH DEC 2009

Venue: Blackfriars Hall, The Plains, Norwich NR3 1AU
Map click here
Venue Tel: 01603 628477
Car Parking: Local car parks
Disabled facilities: Full facilities for the disabled
Fair Manager: Des Doy, Topsail Books
Type of Fair: General antiquarian and secondhand books with often maps and prints
Times: 10.00-4.30
Admission: £1

Peakirk Books attend several fairs a year. You can see their list of forthcomming fairs here.

Christmas Gift Cards

2009-12-02T10:00:00.010Z

Peakirk Books carries children's books.

Stephen Foster carries rare books and fine bindings.

Amwell Book Company carries modern art, architecture and photography and has a shop in Central London. You can read more about their shop here.

East Riding Books carries books on all aspects of music.

Marchhouse Books carries Children's and illustrated books plus a very small general stock.

The pictured book is The Thames to the Solent By Canal and Sea by J. B. Dashwood and is from the stock of Bagot Books

N.B. individual dealers have their own terms and conditions so do read the individual websites properly and email the dealer if you are unsure.

Book of the Week

2009-12-01T11:16:00.004Z

TWO MERRY MARINERS by John Brymer and illustrated by Stewart Orr
Published: Blackie & Son Ltd., 1902
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardback

1st, Large oblong format. Red cloth spine. Colour pictorial boards. Colour plates. Story in verse., Book condition VG-, Covers edge worn with slight loss of surface paper to corners. Spine bumped and slightly grubby. Inscription in ink to half-title page. Some light fingering and foxing but contents generally clean. A nice copy.

Stock number: 736486.
From: Stella & Rose's Books
£ 120.00 ( approx. $US 191.89 )

You can view more children's picture books here.