Juxtabook

Today only: 50% off Books £20 and Under - Last Day of Sale

For the last day of our sale we're extending the offer of 50% off to books £20 and under.

Though inexpensive, there are some really interesting volumes in all subject areas. You can browse hundreds of these books on our website and grab yourself a real bargain. 
 

Scroll down for the offer code and further details.

(Does not include new books including the British Library Crime Reprints)

 

(Pictured: Woven Landscapes - poetry from six poets - now £1.25!)

To receive your 50% discount please use the code 50Jan25 at the checkout. Thank you. Valid on books on our £20 and under shelves.*

This code is valid for the whole of January and may be used more than once. Please feel free to pass the code onto your students, friends and family.

(Pictured: Love Marriage by Monica Ali - special edition with sprayed edges matching dust jacket - now £9)

 

(Pictured: Anne Hughes, Her Boke - now £6 - First published in Farmers’ Weekly in the 1930s. The writer under her pen name Jeanne Preston claimed to have had an original diary whether this was merely expanded or its existence was a fiction is not proved. It is however a lively and entertaining read, evoking country life in the late eighteenth century in an apparently plausible Herefordshire dialect. )

 

*The Small Print and a Note on Postage: valid until midnight on Friday 31st January 2025 on any book in stock on our website priced £10 or under, excluding the few brand new books that we sell including Bay of Ghosts, An Almshouse for Linton and the British Library Crime reprints. Postage is extra. We have recently reduced our shipping charges for multiple book purchases but you may find the shipping cost does rack up. Rest assured that if you are over-charged we will refund you. This is most likely to apply to UK customers as sadly overseas shipping is expensive. In some few cases there may additional shipping costs (if the order involves lots of hardbacks or heavy volumes) but you will always be given the chance to cancel if you are unhappy. Any questions on shipping just email me.  Thank you.

Some Lesser Known Writers

One of the many pleasures of working in the rare and secondhand book trade is the sheer range of books that pass through your hands. It is wonderful to read copies of less well-know works by less well-known writers in first editions, or in vintage bindings that are close to contemporary with the original readers. These books often come with all the previous ownership marks that a book acrues, from names and dates on the fly-leaf to the marginalia and inserted epherma from letters to pressed flowers.

 

 

Over the last few decades many re-publishing houses have sprung up. These houses often produce quality editions, carefully proof checked (unlike the horrid, scanned, print-on-demand versions) and with interesting extras such as erudite introductions by modern novelists or literary critics, but for me there is still something about having an original volume as published for the first generation of a work's readers.

 

 

Of course not all obscure works are worth re-publishing and not all worth re-publishing have been given that treatment. There is the thrill therefore of beach-combing, so to speak, along the tide line of literary hsistory on our shelves and the shelves of my colleagues in the trade.

 

 

Older versions or handsomely bound verions of a text can be expensive but actually many are volumes are really very reasonable. Copies on my own shelves start at around £20. You might enjoy taking a look! 

 

 

 

Pictured:

The Serious Wooing: A Heart's History by John Oliver Hobbes. Methuen & Co., 1901. Novel on the New Woman theme of the 1890s. John Oliver Hobbes was the pen-name of Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie 1867-1906. Attractive Art Nouveau binding. Separately we also have a double autograph signed with both Craigie's names available here.

Ariadnê: The Story of a Dream by Ouida [Maria Louise Ramé 1839-1908] Chatto and Windus, 1878. Slightly shaky reading copy.

The Daltons, or, Three Roads in Life by Charles Lever. 1852. First edition. Lavishly illustrated by Phiz (best known for illustrating the work of Charles Dickens) with nearly 50 pictures. Half-leather binding.

Nancy by Rhoda Broughton [1840-1920] Richard Bentley, 1887. Victorian novel by Rhoda Broughton, one of the most popular novelists in the nineteenth century.

The Farmer of Inglewood Forest by Elizabeth Helme [1743-1814]. Published by A. K. Newman, c.1820s. Novel first published in 1796. No date but Newman took over the Minerva Press c.1820 so likely later 1820s or 1830s. Textured cloth blind impressed with panel of decorative scroll work to both front and rear boards. spine has gilt titles and gilt illustration. Publisher’s catalogue 4pp on smaller yellow paper at the end of the text block; this includes a mention of Mrs Hofland’s Self Denial published 1827.

The Incomparable Bellairs by Agnes and Egerton Castle. Thomas Nelson and Sons, undated. Full leather binding decorated with flowers and ruled lines, raised bands and fleur de lis on the spine. The binding is perhaps amateur.

Harrogate Book Fair Manager Richard Hodgson and Christa Ackroyd of the Bronte Birthplace in Thornton

Harrogate Premier Book Fair Manager Richard Hodgson with Christa Ackroyd of the Bronte Birthplace in Thornton talking about both the book fair on Friday and Saturday 15th / 16th and the Bronte Birthplace house. Christa Ackoyd will be opening the Harrogate Book Fair in this our 50th year of the PBFA. The Bronte Birthplace will also be guest exhibitors at the fair.

Harrogate Book Fair

TIME & DATE
15th March 2024, 12:00 - 18:00
16th March 2024, 10:00 - 16:00

VENUE
Derwent & Calder Rooms, Pavilions of Harrogate, Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG2 8NZ

Harrogate Book Fair, Christa Ackroyd and The Brontë Birthplace Campaign

 

The PBFA Harrogate Premier Book Fair Team are thrilled and delighted to confirm that journalist and TV presenter Christa Ackroyd from the newly formed community benefit society, The Bronte Birthplace, has kindly agreed to open the Harrogate Fair, in this the 50th anniversary year of the PBFA.

The birth house of the Brontes is in Thornton, on the outskirts of Bradford so, with the strong local association in terms of being close by and linked to our collective interest in books, the newly created society will also be present as a guest exhibitor throughout the fair to better explain the background intentions that the society is seeking to attain. In effect they will re-open the birth house as an inspirational hub for disadvantaged youngsters.

The birthplace will be open in time for Bradford to celebrate being City of Culture in 2025 and the birthplace is one of the recipients of grants to celebrate the city's past while looking towards the future.

Christa writes, "When I was 10 having been adopted I needed some inspiration as to where I was going in life." Her adoptive father took her to visit the Haworth Parsonage with the message that the Brontes who grew up there and became famous were born under similar humble beginnings on the outskirts of Bradford to Christa, but anything is possible when you work for it.

As a footnote Christa also told our fair manager that Charlotte Bronte had the first recognized female pre-nuptial agreement in Britain whereby she left the royalties from her works in trust for her father, who died 7 years after she did.

The Brontë Birthplace Campaign have raised enough money to have made a successful offer on the house. They are now raising funds to restore and run the property. They need another £355,000 to renovate and open to public for Bradford 2025 City of Culture and are crowdfunding here.

As well as finding our more about the Bronte Birthplace, visitors to the fair will be able to browse the books of over 30 booksellers across the two rooms of the fair. There will be plenty of Bronte books as well books in all subjects, at all prices from modern first editions to antiquarian, fiction to non-fiction, as well prints, maps and ephemera.

Harrogate Book Fair 

15th March 2024, 12:00 - 18:00
16th March 2024, 10:00 - 16:00

VENUE
Derwent & Calder Rooms, Pavilions of Harrogate, Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG2 8NZ. £2 on the door or visit the website for a complementary ticket.

 

 

The books pictured are all from my stock and will be with me at CL Hawley's stand on the 15th and 16th March at Harrogate Book Fair.

 

Book Sale!

40% off all books in stock - today only

 

Pictured: Unicorn: The Poetry of Angela Carter from our Angela Carter shelf.

Use the code 2017aug40 at the checkout for a 40% discount on our book prices on Monday 28th August only. There is no minimum purchase and no limit to how often you can use the code on the day so browse our site and enjoy!

Please feel free to pass the discount code onto friends or to your students.

The small print: valid until midnight on Monday 28th August. Postage is extra. Because of the sizeable discount we cannot subsidise postage so large orders from outside the UK might require increased shipping costs. We will contact you to explain if there are any additional costs once your order has gone through, or you can email us before placing an order. You will be able to cancel the order if you're unhappy with the extra shipping.

Book catalogues you might enjoy:

Authors A-Z
Fiction
English local history by county
Children's Literature
Poetry and Criticism
Novels and Criticism
Classics
Language Studies
History
Philosophy
Movements and Themes in Literature
French Literature

Tiding the philosophy shelves

 

I spent the day tiding the Philosophy Shelves; there is a selection above, with lots more on Ethics and other subjects on the website. Tidying a bookcase can be an enjoyable thing but for booksellers it is a frequent necessity. For secondhand booksellers in particular you can suddenly have an influx of new stock in what was previously a category of just a dozen or so items. Space has to be made. Equally you can suddenly sell a lot of books leaving gaps - the gaps are never where you need them!

Both things, buying and selling in quantity are a tremendous pleasure. Buying books? Well unpacking a few hundred books feels like Christmas every time, even though I know I'm only their temporary owner. And selling? It is the Christmas pleasure in reverse - how great to pass books on, however much I'll miss them, to someone who appreciates them.

 

Literary biography on our £5 and under book sale shelves

As I mentioned recently, to make room for more stock we're having our annual clear-out of cheaper items. Though inexpensive there are some really interesting volumes in all subject areas. You can browse nearly 200 pages of these books on our website and grab yourself a real bargain.

To receive your 50% discount please use the code 50Jan17 at the checkout. Thank you.

To give you some inspiration I'll be posting a few books in the £5 and under category on here over the next two weeks.

 

 

Curriculum Vitae: A Volume of Autobiography by Muriel Spark. Curriculum Vitae: A Volume of Autobiography is now just £1 with the code above.

Other literary biography in the sale include:

Rebecca West: A Life by Victoria Glendinning

Young Thomas Hardy and The Older Hardy both by Robert Gittings

Will This Do? The First Fifty Years of Auberon Waugh

Eliot's Early Years by Lyndall Gordon

The Life of Katherine Mansfield by Antony Alpers

The Young Fanny Burney by Winifred Gérin

1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

The Private World of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge

Green Shadows: The Life of John Clare by June Wilson

More from our £5 and under book sale shelves

As I mentioned yesterday, to make room for more stock we're having our annual clear-out of cheaper items. Though inexpensive there are some really interesting volumes in all subject areas. You can browse nearly 200 pages of these books on our website and grab yourself a real bargain.

To receive your 50% discount please use the code 50Jan17 at the checkout. Thank you.

To give you some inspiration I'll be posting a few books in the £5 and under category on here over the next two weeks.

 

 

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd becomes a bargain at 75p with the above code.

Other fiction books under £5 include:

The Young Visitors or Mr Sateena's Plan by Daisy Ashford. With preface by J M Barrie. 

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Room at the Top by John Braine in the Classic Orange Penguin binding. Film tie-in with Laurence Harvey as Joe Hampton to the front. 

Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R. D. Blackmore in this very pretty edition:

 

 

The Small Print and a Note on Postage: valid until midnight on Tuesday 31st January on any book on our website priced £5 or under. Postage is extra. We have recently reduced our shipping charges for multiple book purchases but you may find the shipping cost does rack up. Rest assured that if you are over-charged we will refund you. This is most likely to apply to UK customers as sadly overseas shipping is expensive. In some few cases there may additional shipping costs (if the order involves lots of hardbacks or heavy volumes) but you will always be given the chance to cancel if you are unhappy.

50% off books £5 and Under

To make room for more stock we're having our annual clear-out of cheaper items. Though inexpensive there are some really interesting volumes in all subject areas. You can browse nearly 200 pages of these books on our website and grab yourself a real bargain.

To receive your 50% discount please use the code 50Jan17 at the checkout. Thank you.

To give you some inspiration I'll be posting a few books in the £5 and under category on here over the next two weeks.

 

Selected Letters, 1796-1817 by Jane Austen  and edited by R. W. Chapman. Paperback. xxviii, 226pp. With an introduction by Marilyn Butler. Label to back stating that it was bought at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton.

Other Jane Austen books under £5 include:

Jane Austen's Novels: A Study in Structure

My Dear Cassandra: Letters to her Sister

Reader, I Married Him: Study of the Women Characters of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot

A Portrait of Jane Austen by David Cecil

The Small Print and a Note on Postage: valid until midnight on Tuesday 31st January on any book on our website priced £5 or under. Postage is extra. We have recently reduced our shipping charges for multiple book purchases but you may find the shipping cost does rack up. Rest assured that if you are over-charged we will refund you. This is most likely to apply to UK customers as sadly overseas shipping is expensive. In some few cases there may additional shipping costs (if the order involves lots of hardbacks or heavy volumes) but you will always be given the chance to cancel if you are unhappy.

40% off books

 

40% off all books in stock - today only Use the code 2016mar40 at the checkout for a 40% discount on our book prices on Monday 28th March only. There is no minimum purchase and no limit to how often you can use the code on the day so browse our site and enjoy!

Please feel free to pass the discount code onto friends or to your students.
 
Pictured is George Eliot: The Last Victorian by Kathryn Hughes - a signed copy. Browse our Victorian literature here.

Book catalogues you might enjoy:

Authors A-Z
Fiction
English local history by county
Children's Literature
Poetry and Criticism
Novels and Criticism
Classics
Language Studies
History
Philosophy
Movements and Themes in Literature
French Literature

 

Above is one of  many books that we have in stock on the poet and artist David Jones.

The small print: valid until midnight on Monday 28th March. Postage is extra. Because of the sizeable discount we cannot subsidize postage so large orders from outside the UK might require increased shipping costs. We will contact you to explain if there are any additional costs once your order has gone through, or you can email us before placing an order. You will be able to cancel the order if you're unhappy with the extra shipping.

The book trade has moved to Yorkshire for the weekend ...

The amazing experience that is the York Book Fair is due to open at 12 noon tomorrow (Friday 18th September). There are three floors of stands: over 200 booksellers and thousands and thousands of rare, unusual, collectable and just plain readable books. Not to be missed!

You can download a free ticket here: admission is otherwise £2 on the door. The fair is open 12-7pm on Friday and 10-5pm on Saturday at the Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse, YO23 1EX. There is a free shuttle bus from outside York railway station. There is some parking available at/near the racecourse. There is a cafe and a bar at the venue.

Three Ibooknet members are exhibiting and I caught some pictures of their stands as they were busy setting up today:

Heather and Jeff of Peakirk Books are on the mezzanine floor and already their beautiful children's books catch the eye.

 

 

Stephen Foster on the ground floor has an eclectic range of books and also a large bowl of humbugs on his stand so if your blood sugar is flagging as you browse all those stalls you know who to visit!

 

 

 

 

And my own stock (literary criticism, literary biographies, fiction, poetry and philosophy mainly) is safely shelved on the first floor:

 

 

 

 

We hope to see you there! In the meantime some close ups of my stock - click to enlarge:

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, that's a signed Dorothy Whipple - my favourite book on my stand! You never know it might still be available after the fair. 

 

And here's the rest of the volumes in situ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you come to the fair do come and say hello!

 

A version of this blog post was first posted onto the Ibooknet blog.

All About them Books (No Kindle)

You may well have seen it already but just in case not here's a Californian bookshop's take on All About That Bass by Megan Trainor. With thanks to my Ibooknet colleague Mike at A Book for all Reasons who passed it on after spotting it in Sheppard's Confidential book trade newsletter... 

 

40% off All Books Today Only

Mr Norris Changes Trains on the Christopher Isherwood shelf.

 

Today only, we're offering 40% off all in-stock books (ie not new books, or booksearch orders). If it is on our website then you can order it at 40% off...

Use the code MayDay2015. Valid until midnight.

• no minimum spend - you can even use it on our £1 and under section!
• use it as often as you like during the day
• code is for anyone - feel free to pass it on to a friend
• you can order from anywhere in the world but please read note on overseas postage
• you can also order by email or by phone and pay by cheque if you prefer

Postage is extra.

Overseas postage: the cost of posting abroad has rocketed in recent years so if you make a substantial order I might need to contact you about the postage costs. If I have to put the price of postage up then you'll have the chance to cancel of course.

We've lots of categories to interest book bloggers:

General fiction

Authors A-Z

Literary criticism and theory

Novels and criticism (by era)

Letters

...and lots of national literatures: 

African literature

American literature

Russian literature

Scottish Literature

...and you can also browse by clickable keywords on the right side of each book page giving more flexibility - so you can find any literature in translation from any catalogue.

And a reminder that our other offer is still open:

 

I'm also offering UK based readers of Juxtabook the chance to buy a new copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke post-free in honour of the up-coming TV adaptation. It is one of my favourite books. The cost is £8.99 and you can pay me simply here with most cards - you don't need an account. Just note that you're buying Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in the description.

Any questions or problems, drop me an email.

40% off books coming soon and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell post-free

 

Advanced notice: on Monday we're having a sale - 40% off all books in stock. Subscribers to our newsletter get first nibble at this treat so if you're not already on out list you might like to join here. The newsletter will go out first thing Monday.

If you don't want to join our newsletter list you won't miss out entirely as I will post the discount code on here at about 10am. Pictured is The Lost Traveller by Antonia White in the Virago Modern Classics edition which is on our Antonia White shelf. We have lots of fiction for sale and you can browse our author shelves here.

 

I'm also offering UK based readers of Juxtabook the chance to buy a new copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke post-free in honour of the up-coming TV adaptation. It is one of my favourite books. The cost is £8.99 and you can pay me simply here with most cards - you don't need an account. Just note that you're buying Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in the description.

Any questions or problems, drop me an email.

£30 voucher to spend on books to be won

A little reminder of our competitions - closing date is Monday - enter by email :

Competitions

We've two competitions for you including one for children.

1. Win a £30 gift voucher to spend on any books in our online shop

Answer the following three questions by email and if you're correct your name goes into our prize draw for the £30 voucher. Closing date - Monday 29th September

• As whom was the writer Mary Ann Evans better known?
• Which literary protagonist must deal with Grendel's mother?
• Which was published first: Parade's End (first pub. of Some Do Not ...), To the Lighthouse or Ulysses?

2. Children age 8-13 win a set of 6 Roald Dahl books for your school and a £10 gift voucher for yourself to spend in our online shop*.

 

Answer the following three questions by email with a parent or guardian and if you're correct your name goes into the draw for the set of group readers for your school and the £10 voucher. You must be aged 8-13 and have your parent's permission to enter. Doing research is allowed! Closing date - Monday 29th September.

 

• What is JK Rowling's first name?
• Where did Roald Dahl do most of his writing famously?
• Which was published first: The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, or The Railway Children

*A parent or guardian will need to spend the voucher on your behalf. You should get the fun of choosing though!

 

You can also still use the code for a 30% discount off all orders via our website or direct by phone or email .

To order use the code website30 at the checkout. You can logout as a guest or, create a new account. Your old password won't work as this is a complete new system. Sorry.

The discount is off book prices only, postage is extra. It can be used as many times as you like until Monday 29th at midnight. Browse our categories for ideas on how to spend it!

40% off books and more news

We've lots of news about CL Hawley Books in the coming weeks. Behind the scenes we're establishing a new database which should make helping you find books on the most obscure topics so much easier. From your point of view we're also launching a new website in a few weeks time which should be easier to use with a quicker checkout. Whilst we're busy with this we're combining our book of the month offer and our newsletter together in a Bank Holiday sale weekend.

We hope to have news of the new website in time for June's newsletter.

If you haven't signed up for our newsletter yet you're missing 40% off all our books this bank holiday weekend. It is not too late to sign up and you'll be able to use the code until midnight on Monday.

In other news we've a review of amazing and original Borrible trilogy on Gifted by Juxtabook and colleague Nigel Smith has written an interesting piece on publishing an ebook on the Ibooknet blog.

... a reminder

...for those who were interested in the Twilight special edition paperbacks in white - only available in certain countries including the UK - these are now published and available.

You can remind yourself of my thoughts on the collectability or otherwise of special edtion paperbacks here.

And a reminder of the links as they are so hard to find on sales websites. Also as they are not available in the USA non-UK residents might like The Book Depository with its free world wide delivery:

Twilight

New Moon

Eclipse

Breaking Dawn

Searching on Amazon

I am not convinced that Amazon extending the searched material in 'Books' to include the 'excerpts' is a good idea. I was looking for a copy of T.S.Eliot's Social Criticism by Roger Kojecky which is in Amazon's catalogue but searching was not very successful. As it is a older academic book it has of course been quoted quite a lot in subsequent books on T. S. Eliot or on modernism. So instead of offering me copies of the book I am looking for, I am confronted with a list of books that quote Roger Kojecky's volume. Just look what you get searching for T.S.Eliot's Social Criticism by Roger Kojecky . Poor old Kojecky doesn't appear until items 9 and 10. Now the first time this happened you might scroll or even look on the second page of listings but if you're searching for a lot of items having to burrow through recent books that quote the one you're looking for is a serious pain.

Having said that, I am very taken with the one that appears first on the list Print for Victory: Book Publishing in Britain 1939-1945  by Valerie Holman so maybe as a sales technique it has some points!

Edited to add: that searching for The Poetry of T. S. Eliot by Maxwell is even worse as the excerpts triggering appearances in the search result are only there because they contain the words 'Eliot' and 'poetry'. Seriously, just look! That's really going to narrow the field! Back to my frustrating searching. 
 

New old books and Green Metropolis

I have had a look at Green Metropolis a few times but never used it. It is a book recycling site where anyone can list books very easily. From their site:

We are a company dedicated to encouraging our members to recycle their books, therefore whether it’s a latest release or last year’s bestseller, all paperbacks, hardbacks and audio books all cost just £3.75 to buy (and include free delivery on all standard sized paperbacks). Plus we donate 5p from the sale of each book to the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity the Woodland Trust, to support Woodland Creation. However heavier books such as hardbacks or large format paperbacks may incur a small delivery charge, in order to help cover the extra postage costs. Delivery charges are tailored to individual books but usual range from 50p to £4.50 depending upon the books size and weight.

Most books are £3.75 which includes postage for most paperbacks. Green Metropolis take 75p from each sale. Sellers can discount their books by a set amount of pence or by offering 3 for 2 and they can add extra postage for heavy books. Bearing in mind that even if the seller is offering books for a penny of Amazon (the bane of my life, penny books, as you can imagine) you're paying £2.76 including postage then Green Metropolis offers a good deal especially with the 3 for 2 offers.

Feeling the need for a few new paperbacks to refresh the TBR pile I took the plunge and made an order on  Monday. This was my choice:

Cross Channel by Julian Barnes, The Comfort of Strangers By Ian McEwan (one of the few of his I haven't read) and my next Brenda and Effie Something Borrowed by Paul Magrs.

I was impressed by the price and by the condition and by the speed of postage. The packaging was fine too - often not the case with amateur sellers or even professional ones. The seller I bought from has a very good selection on 3 for 2 and as good service deserves a recommendation I hope this link will take you to his/her pages but you might need to be logged in, if not you'll need to search for member 53717. Meanwhile, as Pooh says of honey, I think I might take Something Borrowed into a corner and make sure no-one disturbs it.

The books that don't exist on Amazon

If like Cornflower you have noticed some weird book details on Amazon recently you might like to read this.