A Spy in the Bookshop; Letters between Heywood Hill and John Saumarez Smith

SMITH, John Saumarez, ed

ISBN 10: 0711226989 / ISBN 13: 9780711226982

Published by Frances Lincoln, London, 2006

About this Item

Small 8vo, black cloth, d.w., cloth very lightly soiled. (London): Frances Lincoln, (2006). Very good Signed by John Saumarez Smith.

Seller Inventory # 276532

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Spy in the Bookshop; Letters between Heywood Hill and John Saumarez Smith
• Publisher: Frances Lincoln, London
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0711226989
• ISBN 13: 9780711226982
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: First.
• Condition: very good
• Dust Jacket Condition: very good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • ENGLAND
  • LETTERS

About this title

Synopsis

While compiling and editing The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street, John Saumarez Smith discovered that one side of that elegant and entertaining correspondence had included many excerpts from letters that he himself had sent to Heywood Hill, former owner of the shop. His own account of day-to-day life in one of London's best-loved and most stylish bookshops had been used to flesh out Hill's glittering correspondence with Nancy Mitford, who referred to him as "a spy in the bookshop". So here is the real thing. A lively, alarming and candid account of life behind the counter in a fashionable West End bookshop, where all was most definitely not what it seemed, and where deep passions and often irrational animosities flourished and occasionally broke the surface, to the alarm of customers, staff and owners alike.
Witty, stylish and full of insights into literature, the book trade and miscellaneous human weaknesses, this correspondence between the new blood and the retired former owner provides further entertainment, and wisdom, about the surprisingly turbulent world of literary bookselling in the very recent past.

About the Author

John Saumarez Smith has worked at Heywood Hill's bookshop since 1965 and managed it since 1974. He reviews, catalogues and lectures on books, advises on private and other libraries, acts as Honorary Librarian at Chequers, and has been variously described as a book man, a book expert and a book doctor.