Pages & Proofs

Love this book – Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales illustrated by Heath Robinson – offered for sales by ecbooks.  It was published in the 1930s by Hodder & Stoughton for Boots the Chemist and it’s a steal at £100.

The excellent Peter Harrington blog, The Cataloguer’s Desk, considers the greatest bicycle manual ever written, Archibald Sharp’s Bicycles and Tricycles: An Elementary Treatise on their Design and Construction published in 1896. By the 1890s bicycles were incredibly popular, and there was need for a comprehensive guide to their design and maintenance for the general public. In […]

An intriguing opening paragraph to a news story in the Daily Telegraph about Franz Kafka: A letter from Franz Kafka in which the sick writer describes his “naked fear” of mice invading his bedroom and complains about his cat soiling his slippers could be saved from disappearing into a private collection in a last-minute rescue […]

1. Food in England by Dorothy Hartley 2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien 3. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey 4. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 5. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 6. The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts 7. One Day in the Life of […]

A huge collection of Mervyn Peake books and other related items is being offered for sale. Bookseller Michael S Kemp, from Minster on Sea in Kent, has listed his personal collection of more than 500 items on AbeBooks priced at £108,000. It took 30 years to assemble and is thought be one of the world’s […]

On this day in history in 1941, Viking published John Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez. The book is a  “leisurely journal of travel and research” from a trip to the Gulf of California, also known as the Sea of Cortez. It’s an important example of the author’s ample skills in non-fiction writing. Steinbeck was accompanied by […]

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.

Joseph Conrad was born on this day in history in 1857. Born in Poland, Conrad settled in England and went on to write classics like Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent. You are looking at a cover of Victory – a tense adventure story set on a South Pacific island. He died […]

A New Zealand TV weatherman does the weather in Elfish. Really, you’d think New Zealand was connected to a major fantasy movie or something!