Bath Old Books - Bath

“Cute little book shop with loads of great books.”

Bath Old Books is a long established bookstore in the heart of Bath, encapsulating the historical spirit of the city. The bookstore specialises in secondhand and antiquarian books, with specialist areas including books on Bath, Jane Austen, children’s and illustrated books, literature, modern first editions, art and architecture, travel and topography. You will find only the best books in Bath of Books – nothing but decent literature in good condition.

The historical centred bookstore is run by five friendly dealers, each of whom takes turn at the counter, and each have their different specialist knowledge. The management team have also take on the running of the Premier Bath Book Fair (next one opens on Friday 11th October 2015), where nearly seventy booksellers from all over the UK will be exhibiting – it really is a fantastic event for any book fiend! Tickets for this event can also be purchased from Bath Old Books. The bookstore has also recently been featured on BBC’s Antiques Roadtrip.

Upon entering the organised two storey bookstore, you may be shocked at the small size, but you will soon come to realise that it is crammed full of hundreds of books. Each Saturday the bookstore changes their window display to reflect a certain specialist area, or an interesting part of history. Past displays have included a display of Victorian and Edwardian books (accompanied by wonderful decorative cloth covers), a rare collection of beautiful books of Edwardian artist Jessie M. King, and different editions of Jane Austen’s novels.

Keep an eye out for sales on their Facebook page!

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The Books’ Bird also recently visited Bath Old Books (Photo credit), and here are her thoughts…

Situated just off ‘The Circle’ in Bath, ‘Bath Old Books’ is a shop which specialises in second hand books.

Entering the shop ground floor area whilst small, holds a great collection of books including; children’s books, a whole shelf of Jane Austen’s novels and a shelf of Art books.

Much like many bookshops it has a basement area, which is accessed by a twisting staircase. Walking carefully down, we headed to explore the rest of the books, the shop has to offer. The downstairs area covers a larger space than you would imagine. The shelves cover a large range of genres which include; fiction and literature, history, poetry amongst others. The fiction in particular, contains a lovely collection of old books as well as some beautiful Folio Society editions.

Having explored the downstairs area when headed back upstairs to look at the children’s collection, it is here we found a delightful folio copy of Edward Lear’s, Complete Nonsense, a book of amusing verses and poems which include the well-known ‘Owl and the Pussy Cat’. At a fairly reasonable price for a folio society edition, we bought this and thus drew our visit to an end.

A lovely shop with a great collection of second hand and old books. It is another bookshop in Bath I will certainly be visiting again when I am shopping in the city, along with Mr B’s Emporium for Reading Delights and Topping & Co.

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