Category Archives: Blog Posts

An announcement: We won’t be in town between 23-29 October, and so are unable to mail books or entertain guests at our office during this period. If you’d like to purchase a book online, our shopping cart will still be functional, but your books won’t be mailed until 30 October. Apologies for this, and see […]

Here are some great quotes from the Selected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer, intentionally excluding quotes from his extremely sexist essay ‘On Women’: On Reading and Books: “Nine-tenths of our whole modern literature has no other purpose than to swindle the public of a few thalers out of its pocket. Author, publisher and reviewer are in […]

It almost always takes just a small group of people, sometimes only an individual, to change the course of history. And in the case of English poetry, particularly the British Romantic movement, the two most important figures are probably William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who are generally regarded as the founders of the Romantic […]

Our latest book, English Madrigals in the Time of Shakespeare is a collection of madrigals – or secular a capella songs – from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Written in medieval English, if we can call it that, these were probably the pop songs of the day, delighting audiences with proclamations of love […]

As I gaze at our latest acquisition, The Works of Arthur Conan Doyle, I am reminded of Sherlock, the BBC tv series which aired its first season in 2010. Re-interpreted to suit the modern world, Sherlock is an edgy, fun series (one of the best Britain has produced of late) starring Benedict Cumberbatch (villain of […]

I must confess I haven’t read The Works of Tolstoi yet, which I should do soon, given my weakness for Russian literature. In any case, this collection, although far from complete, contains some of Tolstoy’s lesser-known works, especially, many of his short stories. And the greatness of his short stories lies in the glimpses they […]

For those of us with geeky pursuits, examining an antiquarian book can bring about many discoveries, and even more mysteries. Take our Minor Works of Xenophon (1857), for instance. The book itself is not that beautiful to look at, and its contents not particularly groundbreaking. Published as part of Bohn’s Classical Library, which was part […]

We have the following books in stock once again: 1. Dante, The Divine Comedy, 1896 edition. 2. Dante, The Divine Comedy, Franklin Library. 3. Milton, Poetical Works, 1850 edition. 4. Tolstoi, The Works of Leo Tolstoi, 1928 edition.