Читать книгу Confessions of a Bookseller - Shaun Bythell - Страница 45

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Nicky was in the shop today, so I spent a lot of the day tidying up and preparing the house for the people from Shropshire who are coming up for the Readers’ Retreat on Sunday. Anna (Wenlock Books) and Emily (who’s helping to organise everything) are going to be staying in the house, so Janetta, who cleans the shop and house twice a week, has prepared bedrooms for them. The others are staying in The Ploughman Hotel and the Glaisnock guest house.

At 10 a.m. I had a book deal in a house about two miles from Wigtown. About two thousand books, most of which I didn’t want, but they’re selling the house and wanted the whole lot cleared, so I boxed them up and took them away, leaving them with a cheque for £750. Some good regimental histories and nice Arthur Rackham illustrated material too. Rackham is one of a handful of illustrators whose work is instantly recognisable and almost universally known. Along with Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Jessie M. King, Kate Greenaway and a handful of others in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, they created what is wistfully referred to as the Golden Age of book illustration. Sadly, when you find books illustrated by them, often several—if not all—of the plates have been removed, rendering them practically worthless.

I returned to the shop at two o’clock and unloaded the van. Nicky began going through the boxes, and we played the usual ‘Guess how much I paid for them’ game. She guessed £200. Perhaps she would be better suited to running the shop than me after all. She stayed the night, and we had a blind beer-tasting session. She still maintains that she doesn’t like beers that are named after birds. That didn’t stop her from describing a bottle of Corncrake Ale as delicious.

Till Total £57.50

4 Customers