Ellen and Joshua Boyd Green, exhibitors at the Bath Book Fair, pictured in their bookshop in Hay-on-Wye.
The Bath Pavilion is the new venue for the PBFA/ABA annual book fair on Friday and Saturday, July 26-27.
Organiser Daniel Ahern said: “This is the first year for the fair in the Bath Pavilion after being held in the Assembly Rooms in the city since 1986. It’s also the first English joint venture between PBFA and ABA and there’s a similar one in Edinburgh.”
A number of bookshops as well as individual dealers are taking stands at the 90-dealer fair (75 PBFA/15 ABA members).
One of a loose collection of 36 political cartoons from the weekly National Press published in Dublin between 1891-92 priced at £350 with Zetetic Books of Hertfordshire at the Bath fair. It shows the Irish nationalist politician Charles Parnell crossing a tightrope with an old lady (as Ireland) on his back, probably referring to the precarious balancing act he was attempting after the split of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1890.
These include the London bookshop Hatchards in Piccadilly. Ned Fitzgerald of the shop’s rare books department said: “PBFA fairs provide unparalleled access to a wonderful community of book lovers and collectors and these fairs have been quite successful for us. We specialise in modern first editions but also offer a wide range of literature, travel, and history.”
Included in the books which Hatchards is offering at the fair, unless it sells first, is a scarce first edition, 1937, in its dust jacket, of Freya Stark’s classic travel book Baghdad Sketches priced at £465.
Down in Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh borders, Ellen and Joshua Boyd Green run Green Ink Booksellers. They will be exhibiting at the Bath event, one of 12 book fairs that they stand at every year, 11 of them run by the PBFA.
Joshua explained their importance as a natural extension to the business. “They’re good for selling more unusual and higher price items, either into the trade or to the public, good for making contacts within the trade and raising the profile of the shop. They are great for meeting new customers and they are good for buying from other dealers, either books that will fit well with our shop stock or customer wants we are looking out for.”
The Boyd Greens also organise an annual book fair at the castle in Hay-on-Wye and this will run on Saturday, July 20, with 20 dealers. Next year the Boyd Greens want to increase the talks they have at this fair on second-hand books to comprise a full day of talks, calling it Bibliomania.
