Literature
Featured Articles
Recent articles
5 Rare Books about Love, from Peter Harrington’s “Love in Literature” Catalogue
Rare book shop Peter Harrington has recovered, restored and found loving homes for many romantic treasures. Each catalogue is painstakingly curated by a team of Peter Harrington rare book dealers,...
Renée Vivien – Sappho’s first lesbian translator
By Lauren Hepburn In 1877 Pauline Tarn was born in London to British and American parents. She was schooled and spent much of her childhood in France, and began writing verses in French aged 10; at...
Dr Samuel Johnson – A Harmless Drudge
One of the highlights of our recent Fifty Fine Items catalogue, the first edition of Johnson's Dictionary, is a landmark publication in the history of the English language. Tom...
The Hobbit – A play for children and adults
By Madeleine Joelson One spring morning in 1967, twenty-one-year old Humphrey Carpenter—a native resident of Oxford as well as a recent graduate of the university—made use of his local and family...
The Last Woman – Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic vision
By Madeleine Joelson In May of 1823, Mary Shelley found herself widowed and alone. She had returned to England from Italy after the deaths of her husband Percy and their three children, as well as...
History, sex and identity – exploring the legacy of Mary Renault
For a novelist often regarded as ‘middle-brow’, twentieth-century author Mary Renault’s books are striking in their historical accuracy, psychological complexity and meaningful social impact....
“To console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight” – Wordsworth’s Daffodils
By Madeleine Joelson On April 15th, 1802 Dorothy Wordsworth and her brother William were walking around Glencoyne Bay, Ullswater, in the Lake District. The diary entry in which Dorothy records the...
“Who is Sylvia, what is she, That all our scribes commend her?” Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare and Company
This International Women’s Day, Peter Harrington celebrates Sylvia Beach, the trailblazing bookseller and publisher who helped shape the literary landscape of her age. A century ago, she opened a...
The Town That Was Mad: Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood
Considering how long Dylan Thomas was cogitating the essence of Under Milk Wood (from 1931, at 17-years-old), it is paradoxically jarring to know how accelerated and chaotic its near-completion...
Mary Westmacott, the real Agatha Christie
by Andy Stewart MacKay Thanks to her hugely successful detective fiction, and the many film and TV adaptations of her work, Agatha Christie has perhaps done more to define a particular kind of...
BRINGING THE BOOKS TO YOU
Sign up to our newsletter
Be the first to know about new items on our shelves, and to hear about upcoming events and catalogues.
