18 Bookshops
Published on 30. September 2011
Book
Hardback
160 pages
978-1-905207-71-8 (ISBN)
Description
Anne Scott has never housed her books in order of theme or author yet she knows where each of them is and the kind of life it has led. Some have been gifts but most have been chosen in bookshops unique in their style and possibilities. They have been observers of discovery, decisions, and marvels with her, following the line of her time and place. Some are everyday shops with a shelf of books in a corner, some are beginning again after long lives as churches, printing presses, medieval houses, a petrol-station. There are a few the author is too late to see: early print-houses and booksellers here too in this book, searched for and described, side by side with all the bookshops open now and busy with readers. Not one is like another. In one way, the book is a sequence about writing. But first it is a map of books and a life.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 205 mm
Width: 135 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
292 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-905207-71-8 (9781905207718)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Anne Scott lectures in literature and has also been a BBC Scotland broadcaster and occasional writer for The Scotsman and The Herald. She studied at Edinburgh and married there, and her son, Mike, is a successful song-writer and musician. When she was nine a bookseller folded a bookmark with a red cord into her newly-purchased book and that was the beginning of her love affair with books and bookshops. Working visits to Ann Arbor and Kansas in the 1980s, and later to New York City, Dublin and Galway, helped define her professional work as an extended study of Irish and American writing.
Content
FIRST ... 1. COMPENDIUM BOOKSHOP, CAMDEN: The Spread Sail 2. CHEPMAN AND MYLLAR, EDINBURGH 1507-1510: Three Years' Light: 3. THE PARROT, ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON 1609: These to be Solde by Wm Aspley at His Shop 4. THE OLD PRINTING PRESS BOOKSHOP, IONA: Reckoning 5. LEAKEY'S BOOKSHOP, INVERNESS: Little Gidding 6. WILLIAM TEMPLETON'S BOOKSHOP, IRVINE 1782: The Crossing Place 7. SMITH'S, 1 ANTIGUA STREET, EDINBURGH: The Lighted Stage 8. ATHOLL BROWSE BOOKSHOP, BLAIR ATHOLL: Stopping Place 9. THE GRAIL BOOKSHOP, EDINBURGH: No wealth but Life 10. BOOKS OF WONDER, NEW YORK CITY: The Colour of Hudson Street 11. THE TURL BOOKSHOP, OXFORD: If it were lost, then how? 12. THOMAS DAVIES'S BOOKSHOP, 8 RUSSELL STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1763: The Actor, his Bookshop, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell 13. WATKINS BOOKSHOP, CECIL COURT, LONDON: Through 14. KING'S BOOKSHOP, CALLANDER: The Reading Garden 15. BAUERMEISTER'S BOOKSHOP, EDINBURGH: Leaving 16. CARRAROE, CONNEMARA: Henry James at Home 17. KENNY'S BOOKSHOP, GALWAY: How to be in Ireland 18. ATLANTIS BOOKSHOP, LONDON: A Light to Shine Before