I started a blog of this name in 2006, which turned into a monthly column in Book and Magazine Collector. As the name suggests it was written to encourage book-lovers to take a different approach to building up a collection. There are millions of old books out there, and many are far more interesting than the same old titles and themes trotted out by established authorities like… well, Book and Magazine Collector, for one. I hated all those ‘Hundred Most Expensive Books You’ll Never Own’ articles and encouraged collectors to look elsewhere for inspiration. I still do…
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A Cross-Dressing Mystery From 1830
‘You never know what you’ll find’ is more than just a slogan when it comes to P.B.F.A. book fairs. The range of stock is so large and the quality so high that even the professionals are often surprised, and this…
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Meet The PBFA 2: York January 2020 Book Fair and Bernard Sleigh’s 1920 Faery Calendar
‘You never know what you’ll find’ is a great way to describe our book fairs and it’s especially true at York – our January extravaganza is the UK’s biggest one day book fair! Over 120 professional dealers bring more than…
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Meet the PBFA Episode 1: The best book fairs in the country!
I’ve always loved book fairs. You never know what you’ll find because the quality and variety of the books, ephemera, maps and prints is simply staggering. In the last year alone I’ve bought and sold Elizabethan vellum documents, unique diaries,…
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The Murrell Arms, Barnham, Monday 10th July 1911
This wonderful image is from an album of 24 large, sequential photographs taken between the 28th of June and the 21st of July 1911. They show a gang of workmen laying a water pipe along the Yapton Road, Barnham, Sussex….
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1880s Publishers’ Bindings : Books As They Were Bought, Part 10
The 1880s was when the modern world began. Socialism, mechanisation and mass consumerism came of age, not necessarily in that order. And cheap books, published in their millions, flooded onto the market everywhere from railway platforms to Royal Galas. We…
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