Bookshop

“ Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world—the brains of men. ”

“ It is a shop for men. I remember my amazement to discover three copies of a translation of that most wonderful book, the Text-book of Psychology [see Erratum] of Professor William James, in a shop in L'Avenue de l'Opera—three copies of a book that I have never seen anywhere in England outside my own house,—and I am an attentive student of bookshop windows! And the French books are all so pleasant in the page, and so cheap—they are for a people that buys to read. ”

“ She went back to her kitchen.
"Well, Miss Titania," resumed Roger. "You see what I'm driving at. I want to give people an entirely new idea about bookshops. The grain of glory that I hope will cure both my fever and my lethargicness is my conception of the bookstore as a power-house, a radiating place for truth and beauty. I insist books are not absolutely dead things: they are as lively as those fabulous dragons' teeth, and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. How about Bernhardi? Some of my Corn Cob friends tell me books are just merchandise. ”

“ Besides, before the advent of railways, there was not the same facility for distributing books, and one might travel many leagues and visit many villages without coming to a place where there would be a bookshop. In travelling nowadays one is continually in the presence of cheap books. ”

“ We have all sorts and conditions of booksellers: one is a fanatic on the subject of libraries. He thinks that every public library should be dynamited. Another thinks that moving pictures will destroy the book trade. What rot! Surely everything that arouses people's minds, that makes them alert and questioning, increases their appetite for books." ”

“ We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul. ”

“ He may, if the gods be kind, on the shelves of bookshops proper find books that were bought for new, but have not sold and still remain, lacking an entry to the world of second-hand, still fresh, still offered at the published price. ”

“ Books are now so dear that they are becoming articles of fashionable furniture more than anything else; they who do buy them do not read, and they who read them do not buy them. I have seen a Wiltshire clothier who gives his bookseller no other instructions than the dimensions of his shelves; and have just heard of a Liverpool merchant who is fitting up a library, and has told his bibliopole to send him Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope, and if any of those fellows should publish anything new to let him have it immediately. ”

“ When the shop of a bookseller, with a promising catalogue which arrives over night, is not too far distant, bibliophiles have been known to rush to the spot in the grey morning, before the doors open. There are amateurs, however, who prefer to stay comfortably at home, and pity these poor fanatics, shivering in the rain outside a door in Oxford Street or Booksellers’ Row. There is a length to which enthusiasm cannot go, and many collectors draw the line at rising early in the morning. ”

“ Buying books by actual inspection at the book-shops is even more fascinating employment than buying them through catalogues. You thus come upon the most unexpected volumes unawares. You open the covers, scan the title-pages, get a glimpse of the plates, and flit from book to book, like a bee gathering honey for its hive. It is a good way to recruit your library economically, to run through the stock of a book-dealer systematically—neglecting no shelf, but selecting throughout the whole stock, and laying aside what you think you may want. ”

“ The past ten years have witnessed rather more than 600 high-class sales of books by auction in London alone, and the vast majority of the collections dispersed to the winds during that period of time were not fifty, nor forty, and, at a venture, not thirty years old. Nay! it would be tolerably safe to go still further, and to say that the life of a library is, as a rule, less than half that of a man. ”

“ The fairly well arranged book store is the one place where a book for a boy may be bought in proper form. Though the second-hand book store is an interesting place for the man who has not the germ fear, it is no place to get a boy's book. And the old-fashioned book shop that must have been a joy to the man of reading tastes has passed, as has the old apothecary shop. From their modern offspring, the book store and the drug store, we must get our [225] books and our physic. It is on the shelves of these book stores that buyers like to explore and make discoveries of editions. ”

“ In this, the libraries should consider they are not a trade organization, who, like the booksellers, depend on their trade for a living. Publisher and bookseller are one in interest—producer and distributor, and it is economically proper that the publisher's product should pass through the hands of the bookseller, and to whom?—to their clientele, the public. What relation does the library have to the bookseller, other than as a buyer, the same as the rest of the community? ”

“ Sellers of books must always exist, but it is possible [Pg 61] to drive out of the trade those who do it the most honour. We see what has occurred in the new book trade, and there can be little doubt that the book-buyer loses much more than he gains by the present system of discount. When the bookseller could obtain sufficient profit by the sale of new books to keep his shop open, it was worth his while to take some trouble in finding the book required ”

“ After they are through they bring them back and I allow them a few pennies on their next purchase, but in a few months they ask for the same books again, and some of my customers read every year the same books over and over.
“Then there are the shop girls from near-by department stores. They buy Street and Smith paper novels. The thicker the book the quicker they take it. They tell each other about the most exciting of these love stories, and they, too, read the same books constantly. ”

“ It has hitherto been thought advisable to have one or more second-hand booksellers attached to an important library, from whom the librarian may naturally expect to obtain such books as he requires. Of course a man of knowledge and experience must be paid for the exercise of these qualities, but the price of books is so variable that it is quite possible that the bookseller, from his knowledge, may buy the required books cheaper than the librarian himself would pay for them. ”

“ Many who have the taste, and wish to form a Library, are deterred by fear of the cost. To all such we would say, that a large number of books may be furnished for even One Hundred Dollars—which, by a yearly increase of a small amount, will before long place the purchaser in possession of a Library in almost every branch of knowledge, and afford satisfaction not only to the collector, but to all those who are so fortunate as to possess his acquaintance. ”

“ THIS SHOP IS HAUNTED by the ghosts Of all great literature, in hosts; We sell no fakes or trashes. Lovers of books are welcome here, No clerks will babble in your ear, Please smoke--but don't drop ashes! ---- Browse as long as you like. Prices of all books plainly marked. If you want to ask questions, you'll find the proprietor where the tobacco smoke is thickest. We pay cash for books. We have what you want, though you may not know you want it. Malnutrition of the reading faculty is a serious thing. Let us prescribe for you. ”

“ We turn to hear, "Oh, wouldn't you love to live in a book shop!"
What is it that all men say in a book shop? The great say it, even, and the far from great. Each in his turn looks solemnly at his companion or at the salesman and says: "Of the making of books there is no end." ”

“ The book stores exist only in places where it is commercially possible, and that number of places is very limited. Now I suppose that if we could ascertain the communities where it is not commercially possible for a book store to be carried on, we should none of us have any objection—it seems to me most of us would favor the idea—that the public library should, to some extent, take the place of the book store in supplying books to the would-be owners in such a community. ”

“ From what you say, it would appear to be wiser to lay out one's money at a bookseller's than at a book-auction?
Lysand. Both methods must of necessity be resorted to: for you cannot find with the one what you may obtain at the other. A distinguished collector, such as the late Mr. Reed, or Mr. Gough, or Mr. Joseph Windham, dies, and leaves his library to be sold by auction for the benefit of his survivors. Now, in this library so bequeathed, you have the fruits of book-labour, collected for a long period, and cultivated in almost every department of literature. ”

“ There are hundreds of types of books to collect: volumes as yet unnoticed in the auction room, which lie neglected year in, year out, upon the bookseller’s shelf, and which are disregarded by the conventional collector. They are waiting for the man with imagination to discover them. And many of them will eventually come into their own. My uncle and others of his day could not foresee the slavish manner in which some collectors would in later years pursue, with neither rhyme nor reason, every volume on any arbitrary list. Imagine buying books other than those of your own taste and inclination! ”

“ Remembering a bibliopole's sincere care in gathering his treasures, the taste and tenderness he spends upon them, the actual individuality of the owner of which they partake, and which they proclaim with startling fidelity so long as they are together, an auctioneer's sale of a private library seems one of the cruelest things in the daily annals of a city. Yet if not transferred, in numbers or in the mass, to some benign shelter, the darlings of bygone hours are sure to be launched friendless on the rough chances of trade. A second-hand book is verily-91- a pitiful thing. ”

“ They know as much about the commercial values of books as I do. They buy books as an investment, just like pictures. They follow the auction sales and gamble in books. You can hardly call such people booklovers. Thirty years ago I used to have comfortable chairs in my shop and in the evening big business men, lawyers, and physicians would drop in and examine at leisure some tomes that I had laid before them because I knew they were interested in this or that subject. Today most of the men who are interested in books are so poor that they can hardly pay their room rent. ”

“ In consequence of the large consumption of books the machinery for the manufacture of copies was substantially perfected, and publication was effected with comparative rapidity and cheapness; bookselling became a respectable and lucrative trade, and the bookseller's shop a usual meeting-place of men of culture. ”

“ The scrambling mass of people are simply book lovers and book collectors, and Powner’s has got in a new consignment of books. Such scenes occur every Saturday. The big stalls in front of the shop are filled with all sorts of books, old Roman antiquities, books on sports, old poetry, collected by someone who had disposed of his books, or who had left his treasures behind him. ”

“ I wish there could be an international peace conference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my own conviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in no small measure on them and on the librarians. ”

“ To arrive at a high degree of pleasure in collecting a library, one must travel. The Bibliotaph regularly traveled in search of his volumes. His theory was that the collector must go to the book, not wait for the book to come to him. No reputable sportsman, he said, would wish the game brought alive to his back-yard for him to kill. Half the pleasure was in tracking the quarry to its hiding-place. He himself ordered but seldom from catalogues, and went regularly to and fro among the dealers in books, seeking the volume which his heart desired. ”

“ Folios can take care of themselves, but a man needs to have a first-rate all-round knowledge who would essay to catalogue a good old-fashioned miscellaneous library.
In France, sale-catalogues are prepared by experts, who are called in to assist the auctioneers; in London the auctioneers keep their own cataloguers, and in the country towns they seek the assistance of booksellers, or do the work themselves. ”

“ A lot of people have a good library nearby, where they can find books, or request them on interlibrary loan. Some people are big eBay fans; others like to hunt for bargains on specialist booksites. And of course lots of volunteers enjoy rummaging through actual used bookstores, or local markets, or yard sales.
Even if you're not going to take on a book yourself right now, search for some on the Net and find out about how to get a copy. Next time you pass an antiquarian bookstore, or a book market, drop in and browse. ”

“ The book-lover eliminates as far as possible the question of value from his walks abroad, and leaves his gold at home to be expended as opportunity arises in the auction-room, where open competition holds the market in a virtual equipoise, or in the shops of recognised dealers, who hold his commissions and are always on the look-out for important works. He is aware, however, that intrinsically good books are to be met with continually in all sorts of places, and it is these that he hopes to obtain, and from these that his library is most often recruited. ”

“ Magazines are here sold wholesale to other dealers or retail to you or to me or to anybody. The magazines given to the Salvation Army by charitable people are sold for from five to fifteen cents each. A very well-equipped rare book department attracts collectors from all over the city; “Book Prices Current” is the guide for the sales prices. School books are sold in great quantities. I believe the profit of this shop to be far greater than of any other book shop in the city, as its proprietors do not need to pay for the books they are selling. ”