London and the Modernist Bookshop

Explores how bookshops like David Archer's on Parton Street (London) in the 1930s were sites of distribution, publication, and networking.

Matthew Chambers (Author)

9781108708692, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 May 2020

75 pages
18 x 12.5 x 0.5 cm, 0.8 kg

'Chambers has produced a fascinating, elegantly written history of one bookseller, one bookshop, one historic publishing street that, despite its brevity, is rich in detail.' Allan Madden, Art History

The modernist bookshop, best exemplified by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Co. and Harold Monro's Poetry Bookshop, has received scant attention outside these more prominent examples. This writing will review how bookshops like David Archer's on Parton Street (London) in the 1930s were sites of distribution, publication, and networking. Parton Street, which also housed Lawrence & Wishart publishers and a briefly vibrant literary scene, will be approached from several contexts as a way of situating the modernist bookshop within both the book trade and the literary communities which it interacted with and made possible.

1. Introduction. Modernist bookshops
2. Red Lion Square
3. 4 Parton Street
4. 2 Parton Street
5. 1 Parton Street and beyond.

Subject Areas: Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP], Retail sector [KNPR], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Literary reference works [DSR], Literature & literary studies [D]