London · UK
01
Persephone Books, Bloomsbury.
They sell mid-century novels by women who were briefly famous and then forgotten. Every cover is grey. Inside is the loudest reading room I've ever been in.
A spring photo project from twelve shops across three countries — places that stay open when they shouldn't, that keep selling books nobody asked for, that smell like the inside of a coat.
I started this project because my favourite bookshop closed. It was an ugly Tuesday. The shutters were down, the chalkboard was inside the window, the cat had been re-homed. I had been in there twice a week for nine years and I had spent maybe £60 in total. That, I think, is on me.
So I went to twelve of them in March. Some are still here. Some I am not sure about. All of them deserve the rent.
They sell mid-century novels by women who were briefly famous and then forgotten. Every cover is grey. Inside is the loudest reading room I've ever been in.
The name means "read slowly". There is a bicycle hanging from the ceiling and a piano on the second floor that someone is always quietly tuning. Eight hours could pass without anyone noticing.
One shop, one book per week. They sell exactly the single volume the owner has spent the last month thinking about. Last week it was a thin paperback on the history of Japanese envelopes.
Four floors. Three stories. A small balcony that overlooks the rest of the books. The barista has a poetry book under her arm at all times.
The full archive — twelve shops, sixty-eight frames — is in Issue 14 of The Quarter. Available wherever good print is still sold.