BOOKSHOPS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 900, 20 August 1910, Page 9

BOOKSHOPS.

. Sir Oliver Lodge did a bold thing recently. At a booksellers' dinner he 'ventured to suggest that thero aro some thing!! that not a few British booksellers have still to learn. Many of us will think that the risk was worth taking. Book buyers fall roughly into two classes,—those who buy books,becausu there arc birthdays and those who buy books-because'they aro 'interested. h\ things of'tho mind. Tho first class enter a shop anxious to .get through a bothersome task as quickly as possible. They usually know how much money they want to spend;.beyond that .all is formless and void. Verse or. prose, biography or novels', Mr. Shaw's plays or. tlio last work on fchermu-dyiianiics—they drift among them rudderless and distraught.' Per-, sons'of this kind do not want to be allowed to. wander "freely round stored shelves and ;cases. ■ They waiit to be .taken-in hand firmly and politely ss soon as they enter the shop,by an' sssist.Hiit who will put into t/ieir hands without fuss or loss of timo the correct volume. The vast majority of our booksellers cater for them admirably. It is ■ t!.<?'second class which is rather ne''glcited. ;:•'

{•;• The man who' likes books for their own!sake sometimes enters a shop with a definite purchase in view, always with a mind open to suggestion; the persua•sion of tho: Look itself. The last thing he wishes for is to .bo invited to buy or .to have advire thrust upon him by a : h ell-meaning but too persistent attendant. The 'genuine lover of hooks abominates standardisation and. demands freedom; hut how many shops fro there that lay. everything before you and let you fall a free, and contented victim to the spell ? A few in ' the university ;citi<!B,.;i veryifcw in Londohv-nqt many outside Booksellers.' may. "te presumed to understand their own business, and doubtless tlio birthday bookbuypr. is numerically m. overwhelming 'majority, but we are'tempted'-to wonder with Sir Oliver Lodge whether ,'enoiigh is done to tempt the money out 'of'the poukeSii of those who rtally know .and care what a book is. ■ Some of our readers may,, remember "Bookshops, Limited," an enterprise founded to supply- London, and subsequently Grout Britain, with shops in which the •genuine book-buyer might browse, and :the raw material.of new,book-buyers bb worked up by the exposing for sale of good books and • new books, under cqniditions conducive to good bookmanship. The company ; wa3 to do'what- the oldfashioned individual bookseller, who know about books, had failed to do, to stem the rising tide of trashy fiction and'cheap reprints, now practically tho only sort of books "stocked" by the small bookseller, who also as a rule sells stationery or other things which he understands better than books. "Bookshops" failed, , ; too; but principally, wo believe, because it was managed in a way that'wooed failure quite' irresistibly. When are we to see a sorious and capable .effort to provide tho nation with a. kind of shop without which it will always be, compared with some other peoples, a nation of illiterates? A great'demand awaits the.creative call of a well-managed supply.—"Daily News."