Skip to content

No image available

The Bookshop

No image available

The Bookshop

by FITZGERALD, PENELOPE

  • Used
  • near fine
  • Hardcover
  • first
Condition
Near Fine/Near Fine
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Item Price
€234.88
Or just €216.08 with a
Bibliophiles Club Membership
€18.79 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 6 to 12 days

More Shipping Options

Payment Methods Accepted

  • Visa
  • Mastercard
  • American Express
  • Discover
  • PayPal

About This Item

London: Gerald Duckworth and Co, 1978. Book. Near Fine. Boards. 1st Edition. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. Gilt lettered green boards in Yellow and Green price clipped dust jacket. Some slight spotting to top edge and slight fade to spine of the dj o/w a near fine copy..

Synopsis

In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one.

Reviews

On Dec 9 2014, The Old Library Bookshop said:
A recent review of a new book about Penelope Fitzgerald in "The New Yorker" prompted me to search the shelves of my own used bookshop for a copy of one of her novels. Fortuitously, "The Bookshop" was the one Fitzgerald novel in stock.

The author herself sums up her works by saying that they are "...too sad really to be comedies, but not important enough to be tragedies." And this novel is no exception. Florence Green, widowed and childless, decides that her little Suffolk town needs a bookshop. Florence is one of the most endearing characters I have encountered in my recent reading, sweet and trusting, yet forceful when she needs to be. She encounters a formidable enemy in Mrs. Violet Gamart but also a powerful supporter in the reclusive but influential Mr. Brundish. The author's description of the landscape of the Suffolk coast in which her town of Hardcastle is located had me scrambling to my computer to Google up some images. While the scenes were lovely, Fitzgerald's description of the disappearing coastline and the creeping damp, combined with the portraits of the pettiness of the townspeople, does not have me scrambling for a ticket to Suffolk. Although both the characters and the landscape seem to be colluding to defeat her, Florence's unflagging sweet nature and her pluck and determination win the admiration of this reader. And the novel's terse, perceptive prose has won a new fan for Penelope Fitzgerald.

(Log in or Create an Account first!)

You’re rating the book as a work, not the seller or the specific copy you purchased!

Details

Bookseller
Contact Editions CA (CA)
Bookseller's Inventory #
031182
Title
The Bookshop
Author
FITZGERALD, PENELOPE
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Near Fine
Jacket Condition
Near Fine
Edition
1st Edition
Publisher
Gerald Duckworth and Co
Place of Publication
London
Date Published
1978
Size
8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾

Terms of Sale

Contact Editions

30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

About the Seller

Contact Editions

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2008
Toronto, Ontario

About Contact Editions

We are located at 491 Davenport Road, Toronto, Ontario in our little house of all sorts in the shadow of CASA LOMA, Toronto's only castle.
Our south side location has parking out front and our hours are 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. All other times by appointment which can easily be arranged by calling 416-322-0777 or by e-mailing contacteditions@bellnet.ca


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Featured Titles


MILNE, A.A. - The Christopher Robin Story Book
E.P. Dutton, New York, 1929. Cloth and Boards. Book Condition: Fine. No Jacket. E.H. Shepard (illustrator). 1st Us Edition. Octavo. One of 350 copies signed by Milne and Shepard. Half Green cloth with peach coloured decorated boards with vinyl protector. Housed in decorated matching cardboard box. The box shows wear and soiling but the book is fine.
Milne's selection of the best of the Pooh books. Signed By the Author and Illustrator.
$3500.00 Cdn.



SCALE, BERNARD - An Hibernian Atlas or General Description of the Kindom of Ireland
Robert Laurie and Jason Whittle, 1798. Half Leather. Book Condition: Very Good +. No Jacket. Ellis and Plamer (illustrator). 8vo.
Subtitle reads 'Devided into Provinces; with its sub-divisions of Counties. Baronies. &cc. Shewing their Boundaries, Extent, Soil, Produce, Contents, Measure, Members of Parliament, and Number of Inhabitants; also the Cities, Boroughs, Billages, Mountains, Bogs, Lakes, Rivers and Natural Curiosities Together with the Great and Bye Post Roads. The whole taken from actual Surveys and Observations By Bernard Scale, Land Surveyor and beautifully engraved on 78 Copper Plates by Messrs. Ellis and Palmer'. Brown leather with marble paper to boards. Maps in colour. Rubbing and a little scuffing to boards and wear to leather at extremities, a little darkening to paper to boards towards spine, some tanning to end papers at corners and near gutter, a little foxing to interior, very faint offset to adjacent pages from maps.
$8500.00 Cdn.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Map to Store





About Us | Email Us
2007 Contact Editions Address:
491 Davenport Road
Toronto, Ontario M4V 1B7 Telephone:
Phone: 416-322-0777
Fax: 416-322-3226 Our Hours:
Thursday to Saturday: 11 am to 5 pm
All other times by appointment.


________________________________________________________________________________
Web Site design, hosting, and management by: Back2Front
Web Design Copyright held by: Back2Front
Contact the Webmaster of this site.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
Price Clipped
When a book is described as price-clipped, it indicates that the portion of the dust jacket flap that has the publisher's...
Gilt
The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
Fine
A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
Spine
The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
O/W
An abbreviation for otherwise

Frequently asked questions

tracking-