The Rise of the Modernist Bookshop: Books and the Commerce of Culture in the Twentieth Century

摘要

'When we enter bookshops, we engage in a social and spatial act on the threshold of commerce and culture, one that activates material, aesthetic, political, personal, and communal affiliations and commitments'. So begins this collection of eight essays (and a 'coda') on a selection of bookshops which 'opened their doors for the first time between 1913 and 1927'. In fact, not all of them did exactly that, as we shall see, but the scene has to be set somehow. Five of the shops were in the USA, two in London, and one (or two, really) in Paris; all were, primarily, new bookshops, stocking the latest in English-language literature.