A canny cigar merchant, Joseph Baker, published Smoking & Smoker’s in 1851. The volume shown here priced at £420 from Mike Kemp at the upcoming Etc Fairs book event includes another work, Snuffs & Snufftakers, bound as one. Kemp also offers a ticket to a ‘Smoking Evening’ put on by the Royal Society of British Artists in London in 1891 for £25.
The Bloomsbury Photograph Fair will run in conjunction with the organisers’ monthly book fair (the next is on Sunday, March 10).
A small group of around 10 specialist dealers including Richard Meara, Lisa Tao, James Kerr and Jason Wright will offer 19th century travel photographs and albums as well as early daguerreotypes and cartes de visite.
Kim Jeffery, who founded Etc Fairs’ books and ephemera fairs 20 years ago with her husband, bookdealer George Jeffery, has had to negotiate the tricky business of rising costs at the central London hotel where both fairs are held.
She said: “As with many venues the hotel wanted to increase the rent by 50%. We have negotiated a lower rate but this is still substantial so we have had to cut the number of our annual ephemera fairs in 2024 from six to four.
“We are still running 11 book fairs this year - revenue from these is higher due to exhibitors booking single tables at a higher rate.”
Billed as the largest monthly book fair in the UK, there are 50-plus traders at the March event including Tom Lintern-Mole of Antiquates, Shapero Rare Books and Hereward Books and it covers a wide range of prices and subjects such as slavery-related items from Allsworth Books.
