One of the things I always try to fit into any trip, especially a week away, is a visit to the local secondhand bookshops. Last week I visited four, with rather mixed results.
I decided to drive to Cornwall via Honiton (well, not exactly via, as a small detour was needed). There are two old book shops in Honiton and I'd never tried either before. I went into the first and although there was quite a lot of stock, over more than one floor, much of it was in rather poor condition and there was a general air of tiredness. I don't intend to name the shop as anyone looking for something different may have found exactly what they wanted - so much of this is down to personal preference. Anyway, I did buy one book, a Penguin of HE Bates' 'A Moment in Time' for £2. I looked in at the window of the other shop and it seemed so similar (quiet and dusty-looking) that I didn't bother to go in - maybe my loss, but I guess I'll never know. I then had an excellent pot of tea and a cupcake at the very pretty Toast cafe and headed off to Truro, where the Cornwall Food Fair had begun earlier in the day.
After tasting various delicious morsels on the stalls and talking to the man from Tregothnan (a Cornish estate which grows tea) I settled down to a good cup of Origin coffee (roasted in Cornwall) and a half-price smoked mackerel pasty from the Rick Stein stand. Then it was off to my next bookshop destination, Just Books in Pydar Mews. Now any bookshop that displays a Howard Spring first edition in its window has me on its side from the off and I wasn't disappointed. I bought a perfect edition of Paddy Leigh Fermor's The Traveller's Tree (in the same design as my copies of A Time of Gifts and Through the Woods and the Water) and a reprint of the green Penguin edition of Joephine Tey's The Franchise Affair - both bargains @ £1.50 each.
However, it was when I went upstairs to the biography section that I really struck gold, in that serendipitous way all collectors, however modest, are really on the lookout for. Looking very unassuming in a plainish dust wrapper was what turned out to be a first edition of the Hogarth Press printing of Virginia Woolf's biography of Roger Fry. Not in perfect condition (the dust jacket had pieces missing, although crucially the picture of RF on the front was intact) and under the dustcover, the book covers thenselves were very marked, either by light or water - probably the former. However, someone had thought to protect it in a good removable plastic jacket and there was an inscription inside from 1941, the year after publication. The shop obviously realised the book had some value as they had priced it at £10. Instinctively feeling this must be a bargain, I snapped it up and have since seen others on Amazon advertised for more than twice that. Not that I'm intending to sell, but it feels good to have got a bargain.
No more bookshops (but a great deal of reading - more of which in a subsequent post) until the return journey, when I called into Redruth. Poor Redruth, the less said the better, I think. It's as far away from the beauty of the creek as it's possible to get in one county and I didn't linger. The bookshop was rather sad, stock which looked as though it would take years to shift and poor lighting and front of shop display as well. So much can be done with lighting and it's surprising how few bother. To its credit though, it did have a large number of mid-20C novels, and I bought hardcover editions of Elizabeth Bowen's A World of Love and Monica Dickens' The Winds of Heaven - both @ £2.
I was heading for Launceston for lunch but before eating I went to the last bookshop of the trip, which was semi-hidden away up a passage. And what a revelation, good lighting, a friendly owner and marvellous stock. Hardly any chocolate box covers and a fantastic range of modern reprints of classic and modern classic authors. I had to restrain myself from venturing to the biography and history sections, as by the time I'd scanned the fiction stock, I'd already spent the best part of £20. Not cheap, £3.95 being the average fiction price, but certainly one to go on my list (along with the Truro one) of bookshops to visit every time I pass that way. I bought two Willa Cathers (My Antonia and A Lost Lady, both in Virago Modern Classics) Scapegallows, by Carol Birch, Beyond the Blue Mountains by Penelope Lively and Sharp Through the Hawthorns by Sybil Marshall.
All in all, a pretty satisfactory book-buying week.
A mixture of good & bad luck in the bookshops but that's the way it often is, I find. I'm glad you found one bookshop worth a revisit. I read some of the Sybil Marshalls when they were first published & enjoyed them very much.
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