Geraldine Cox at Kirkdale Bookshop

Geraldine Cox, owner-manager of Kirkdale Bookshop in Sydenham, London

As part of their series exploring what contributes to the enduring success of established booksellers, Kate Gunning, Acting Membership Manager for the BA, talks to Geraldine Cox, owner-manager of Kirkdale Bookshop in Sydenham, London. [This interview previously appeared in the December 2022 issue of the BA’s Bookselling Essentials magazine.]

How did you get into bookselling?

I worked in the local library in the holidays and helped run the school library, so when I was applying for university after my A levels, my father asked if I would rather start a bookshop with him; I decided to give it a go. In September 1966 we started cleaning an old motorcycle shop in Sydenham, southeast London. We opened officially on 13th October 1966. The shop started off quite small and gradually extended over the years. There isn’t an inch of space left!

Continue Reading “Geraldine Cox at Kirkdale Bookshop”

Santa Cruz and the Livraria Duas Cidades

Livraria Duas Cidades was the bookstore and publisher for São Paulo’s intelligentsia. Founded in the middle of the last century with the encouragement of the Dominican Order, and under the leadership of a Dominican priest who left religious life in the 1970s to devote himself only to the world of books, Livraria Duas Cidades took root in the urban and socio-cultural space of the city of São Paulo between 1954 and 2006.

Fue una librería y editora de la intelectualidad de São Paulo. Fundada a mediados del siglo pasado por el aliento de la Orden Dominica y bajo el liderazgo de un sacerdote que dejó la vida religiosa en la década de 1970 para dedicarse sólo al mundo de los libros, Livraria Duas Cidades se arraigó en el espacio urbano y sociocultural de la ciudad de São Paulo entre 1954 y 2006.

Continue Reading “Santa Cruz and the Livraria Duas Cidades”