The Bookshop
A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century
Will be published approx. on 13. October 2026
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-5416-0727-9 (ISBN)
Description
The global history of the rise and transformation of bookstores, from medieval book merchants to today’s neighborhood indies
Whether it’s a local indie bookshop, an online megaretailer, or a chain bookstore, the place we buy books is an essential part of our reading lives. Bookstores connect books to potential buyers and convert idle browsers into committed readers. Yet, as historian Andrew Pettegree reveals, it took more than five centuries after Gutenberg for bookstores as we know them to emerge.
The Bookshop tells a sweeping history of the bookstore. It celebrates the ingenuity of booksellers, from the smugglers who carried contraband books across borders, to the innovators who created the global distribution networks that define books and bookselling today. Even though few bookshops lasted more than a few years during the best of times, booksellers relentlessly sought new ways to get books to readers. Innovators like the squabbling dealers who invented the secondhand bookstore, or Victorian capitalists like W. H. Smith, who built an empire of railroad station book stalls to serve idle passengers, made bookselling what it is today.
The Bookshop is the story of how the bookstore became the indispensable meeting place for book makers and book lovers around the world.
Whether it’s a local indie bookshop, an online megaretailer, or a chain bookstore, the place we buy books is an essential part of our reading lives. Bookstores connect books to potential buyers and convert idle browsers into committed readers. Yet, as historian Andrew Pettegree reveals, it took more than five centuries after Gutenberg for bookstores as we know them to emerge.
The Bookshop tells a sweeping history of the bookstore. It celebrates the ingenuity of booksellers, from the smugglers who carried contraband books across borders, to the innovators who created the global distribution networks that define books and bookselling today. Even though few bookshops lasted more than a few years during the best of times, booksellers relentlessly sought new ways to get books to readers. Innovators like the squabbling dealers who invented the secondhand bookstore, or Victorian capitalists like W. H. Smith, who built an empire of railroad station book stalls to serve idle passengers, made bookselling what it is today.
The Bookshop is the story of how the bookstore became the indispensable meeting place for book makers and book lovers around the world.
More details
Person
Andrew Pettegree is a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews. A leading expert on the history of books and other media, Pettegree is the award-winning author of several books, including The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading and The Library: A Fragile History (with Arthur der Weduwen). He lives in Scotland.
Content
Prologue: Mr Pepys Goes Shopping
Part I: A New Age of Knowledge
1. Printer, Publisher, Bookseller, Bankrupt
2. Imminent Danger
3. Shopkeepers, at Last
4. Roll Out Your Barrow
5. Flying without Wings
6. Old Books and Deep Pockets
Part II: Expanding Horizons
7. The Railway Age
8. Feast or Famine
9. The Great Disruptors
10. Communities of Interest
11. Chain Gang
12. Apocalypse Not Yet
Postscript: Aye Aye
Part I: A New Age of Knowledge
1. Printer, Publisher, Bookseller, Bankrupt
2. Imminent Danger
3. Shopkeepers, at Last
4. Roll Out Your Barrow
5. Flying without Wings
6. Old Books and Deep Pockets
Part II: Expanding Horizons
7. The Railway Age
8. Feast or Famine
9. The Great Disruptors
10. Communities of Interest
11. Chain Gang
12. Apocalypse Not Yet
Postscript: Aye Aye