History of Bookselling

The BRN's first themed event featured presentations from Dr. Will Smith and Professor Simon Eliot. Dr. Smith discussed the multi-generational history of Sam Read Booksellers, emphasizing oral histories and archival research. Professor Eliot highlighted the value of "unwitting testimony" in archives, using examples like public library catalogues and publisher correspondence to reveal hidden insights.

Developing Collaterals: Book Retail Networks in the Creation of Social Prosperity

The second themed Bookselling Research Network event featured a round table discussing bookstores' financial and social dimensions. Three presentations explored the complexity of book retail (Dr. Simon Frost), bookstores as cultural and entrepreneurial nodes (Prof. Corinna Norrick-Rühl), and factors like community and curation explaining the resurgence of independent bookstores (Dr. Ryan Raffaelli).

Reading, Wanting and Broken Economics: with Dr Simon Frost

An Interview with Dr Simon Frost Dr Simon Frost, Principal Academic in English at Bournemouth University and author of Reading, Wanting, and Broken Economics: A Twenty-First-Century Study of Readers and Bookshops in Southampton around 1900 (SUNY Press, 2021) part of SUNY, speaks with Dr Eben Muse (the Stephen Colclough Centre for the History and Culture of the Book) about […]

Feminist & Queer Bookshops – Community and Censure

Join Dr Kathy Liddle and Dr Sarah Pyke as they present their work on feminist and queer bookstores as places of contested cultural interactions. Kathy Liddle My presentation today will focus on two strands of my research on North American feminist bookstores. First, I will briefly discuss my published research on the role of feminist bookstores as what I […]