THE OLD BOOKSELLER.

Shannon News, 8 April 1924, Page 3

THE OLD BOOKSELLER.

NOW DYING OUT. The second-hand bookseller described in many old novels is dying out, (says a Daily Mail contributor). His shop was a storehouse of dust. The piled up windows made the interior dim, and the smell was fusty. Shelves and counter were full to overflowing and untidy stacks of strange looking books littered the floor. The. bookseller himself was sure to be old, and bent, and wrinkled, and if he did not wear a faded skull cap and a pair of big spectacles lie was not true 'to type and tradition.; London in its' byways had many of these curious places. Every town in the provinces had at least one. The bookseller was known to a select circle. Men of letters, local writers, used his parlour as a meeting place. Par-, sons in search of old tomes of theology, scholars in quest of ancient treatises, antiquaries wanting rare local histories —all made for the second-hand bookseller. He was a mine of-know-ledge. He knew the insides of books as well as the outsides. - Much of his pecular business has -gone. Cheap’ editions of classic works have deprived him of a, great deal of his trade The-modern reader who wants a copy of “Josephus,” or Boswell’s “Johnson,” may purchase a new gilt- bound copy for half a-crown. So why give half a sovereign fpr a musty volume hard to read because “f's aTe used far “s's

The modern second-hand bookseller has a brightly, lighted shop. His stock is never very old. He changes it too quickly. He' buys books in bulk and disposes of them rapidly toi make way for others.

He never wore a skull cap; he prefers gold-rimmed eyeglasses ta old-fas-hioned spectacles, and he has no time to waste in his parlour with men who want to talk about books. «, So the picturesque figure of the old bookseller is passing away. He was always to be seen when the library of some local mansion came under the hammer. He was not a business man, measured by modern standards, but he had a keen eye for a “find.” He knew what he was 1: idding for. One of the tribe gave p 5 i once for a Latin primer because he i.ad seen from the title page that it was used by Gray, author of the “Elegy,” when a scholar at Eton; and he got a “fiver” for it from the late headmaster of that college. The story af these romantic "finds” would make interesting reading, but perhaps the time is not ripe for the history of the second-hand bookseller. It would be worth writing—and reading. '