The Bookshop

“A unique and fascinating chronicle of the origins of bookselling and the development of the bookstores we know and love today. The Bookshop is an important contribution to the canon of literary history.”—Molly Guptill Manning, New York Times bestselling author of When Books Went to War

“Andrew Pettegree, the dean of book historians, turns his attention to a too-long-neglected aspect of the field: bookselling. In a thoroughly engaging and deeply researched narrative, he traces the sale of books by printers, peddlers, and priests, from stalls in St. Paul’s Churchyard to gilded department stores, from train stations to chain stores and ultimately Amazon. Pettegree chronicles the resilience of the trade in the face of censorship, banishment, and bankruptcy. This is the arresting and ultimately optimistic story of the making and marketing of print culture. Here is a book for every booklover to buy.”

“Scholars know a lot about how books are made and read. We know less about the selling that forms a link between the two. Andrew Pettegree‘s new book elegantly fills that gap. Its broad chronological reach provides a lively account of what’s both recognizable and strange about the way books found their way to owners and readers at other times and places. The results will make you think differently about the path through which this book reached your hands.”

“In this wide-ranging work, Andrew Pettegree, an outstanding historian of the printed word, traces all the ways that books reached readers, from peddlers’ packs to the internet. His masterful survey brings together information on the book trade in many countries since the time of Gutenberg. The Bookshop will delight anyone who has shopped for books.”—Robert Darnton, author of The Great Cat Massacre