Pages & Proofs

Our friends at English PEN, an organisation devoted to literary freedom, are staging an exciting event later this month when 50 modern first editions are to be auctioned. However, these are no ordinary first editions. All the books have been annotated, usually at length and in great detail, by their authors specially for the ‘First [...]

Hats off to the London rare bookseller Peter Harrington, who celebrated World Book Day yesterday by visiting a local primary school… and taking a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible for show and tell. My daughter normally takes a stuffie or stone found on the beach, so a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible trumps those objects. [...]

Every now and again, you will see a news story like this one from last year where a rare book has been discovered and sold for a high price at auction - £40,630 for an Agatha Christie book is a decent price, but so often with collectable modern first editions the price is defined by the [...]

My colleague Christi recently travelled to our German office in Dusseldorf and crossed the Rhein to visit a wonderful bookshop in Nuess, near Dusseldorf – Neusser Antiquariat. She filmed her tour of the shop and now we can all browse through this haven for rare and collectible books. Enjoy the video.

If you love physical books, and bookshops too, then you will love this video. You may have seen it before – it was posted in January and now has more than three million views. Not bad for a clever little video from a bookshop in Ontario.

One of Britain’s best rare book events is coming up soon. The 2012 York Book Fair, organised by the PBFA, takes place at York Racecourse on Friday September 14th (12 noon – 7pm) and Saturday September 15th (10am – 5pm). Many booksellers who sell on AbeBooks will be present and we urge you to make [...]

My how time flies, I meant to indulge you with this a week ago.  Here are the top 10 bestsellers on AbeBooks.co.uk from last month. 1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 2.There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom by Louis Sachar 3. The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 4. Frankenstein by Mary [...]

What’s the link between Manchester City, Ipswich Town and the Sex Pistols? Well, Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the punks, placed ads promoting the Pistols in match-day programmes for Man City versus Derby County and Ipswich Town versus Liverpool on 4th December 1976. Three days before these two games, the Sex Pistols swore on Thames [...]