The Golden Age of Second-Hand Bookshops

  

In several posts, including this historical profile and this recent report, I have suggested that second-hand bookshops in Britain have, on the available evidence, not reduced in number. This is certainly the case if you include full-scale charity bookshops, but it is also broadly true if you don’t. Indeed, there are more than twice as many now as there were for most of the 20^th century.

Now to be perfectly fair to book-collectors who repine that second-hand bookshops have declined, I think they usually have in mind a certain sort of bookshop, variously described as “traditional”, “old-fashioned”, “classic”, “proper” or “real”. These will typically be privately-owned, by a solo proprietor or a duo, in or not far from the high street, and with several rooms of general stock, mostly vintage and mostly hardback.

Optional extras include piles of books on the floor, a wireless softly playing classical music, cool jazz or cricket commentary, a cat, some comfortable seats, a cellar or attic, and creaking stairs. These represent the Golden Age of the Second-Hand Bookshop.

But when was it? The answer of course is that it was in the book-collector’s youth or their university days, or at most the decade or so following. Girls, boys, film, music, were all much better then too.

The good news is that there are still second-hand bookshops just like that, quite a lot of them. And the comments of assiduous contributors to The Book Guide will tell you pretty clearly where they are. I know best those that are in the North of England, where I live, and in the Marcher Country where I often go on bookshop expeditions.

Let’s look at Cumbria, in the far North West of England. Here there is the wonderful Book Case, Carlisle, occupying the whole of a large Georgian town house, with four floors, many rooms, very wide-ranging stock, and with a café, records and art as well. You could quite easily spend a day in there. Then to the west, on the coast, there is the characterful Michael Moon’s in Whitehaven, another rambling town house with a very large stock.

Penrith has two bookshops, Beckside, opposite the parish church and the Giant’s Grave, two floors, several rooms, plenty to look at, and Withnail, small but a discerning and unusual stock. In the next town, Barry McKay at Battlebarrow, Appleby is a veteran bookseller of literary and antiquarian books, with a stock of about 5,000. 

Further south, Cartmel has the long-established Gatehouse Bookshop, with a small but distinguished offering, and Ulverston has Sutton’s, ‘an appealingly old-fashioned shop’ says arch-browser Booker T, who also notices a newly-opened high street shop at Dalton-in-Furness. Daisyroots at genteel Grange-over-Sands describes itself as a “friendly, independent family business established in 1994”.

To the east, Sedbergh has the very large Westwood Books in the old cinema. In the Lakes, Keswick Bookshop is described by a recent visitor as having “the delights of a REAL bookshop”.

Well, there’s eleven bookshops in one (former) county that ought to meet any Golden Ager’s criteria, and that’s in one of the least populous places in the country. It does, however, attract many visitors, and I suspect that is part of the secret of surviving second-hand bookshops now. You ideally need both loyal local customers, and a thriving holiday trade. The places in Britain that don't have a second-hand bookshop tend to be – how shall I put it? – places without many other attractions either.

But this First Eleven, to use a cricketing term, are not the only players in the Cumbrian second-hand bookshop field. There is a Second Eleven too. They might not quite live up to the superb professional standards of the top team, but they do offer some similar qualities. And after all there were various types and standards of bookshop even in the glory years.

In Cumbria there are also two veteran bookdealers with shops open by appointment, a tourist information centre with stock from over a dozen professional book-dealers, a new bookshop with some second-hand stock, a museum bookshop and an art gallery bookshop, two antiques centres and a curio shop with books, and two specialists, in archaeology and botany. And that is without counting the 9 charity bookshops and a few others.

Ah but, the mischievous might think, you have chosen Cumbria because it so well-blessed with second-hand bookshops. Not so, but, in any case, I estimate that there are about 20 other counties (or equivalent) with a similar picture of around a dozen “traditional” bookshops and around a dozen others.

Some smaller counties don’t have this scale, of course, and never did (eg Rutland), the most remote don’t (eg Northumberland, though it has the splendid and huge Barter Books at Alnwick), some city centres don’t, and there are other less well-served places. But the book collector who doesn’t mind using The Book Guide for a bit of reconnaissance and is prepared to travel will still find plenty of places where they can easily find a long weekend’s worth of browsing.

Furthermore, two developments in the last few years offer opportunities that were not there in earlier decades. The first is the emergence of hybrid places such as cafes, pubs, galleries, with books also available. Now sometimes it must be admitted the stock is fairly marginal and difficult to get at in amongst the other activities, but there are others where it is high quality and easier of access, such as the splendid 35 West in Leominster, Herefordshire, which offers great coffee and cakes and has a discerning selection of literary books (from a professional book-dealer) all along one wall.

The second development is in book barns, with very large stock. When I started collecting there were not all that many really big bookshops: the two at Hay-on-Wye, Richard Booth’s and the Cinema Bookshop, were notable and exciting precisely because they were so huge (and open longer hours). Now, however, there are several more: Aardvark in Herefordshire, for example, and the Astley Book Farm in Warwickshire, or Pendlebury’s in the Welsh hills.

Taken together with the wider variety of places selling some books, this all adds up to quite a strong range of possibilities. The population of Britain has grown considerably and the stock of second-hand books is, despite pulping and discarding, likely to be accumulative. Further education has also expanded substantially. More readers and more books are likely to lead to more bookshops. Though there are some countervailing influences, such as e-books and online booksellers, there seems to be a stubborn affection for real books and real bookshops.

The surprising news I have for melancholy book-collectors is that the Golden Age for Second-Hand Bookshops is not a chimera. It does exist. It is now.

(Mark Valentine)

Picture: Sign for Brazen Head Books, Burnham Market, Norfolk, a charming traditional bookshop.