The striking front cover of Toilers in Art, a c.1890 century reprint of artists’ details including John Tenniel and Thomas Bewick, with 90 illustrations. It costs £65 from Louise Harrison, organiser of the two-day Ilkley Book Fair.
Two antiquarian and secondhand book fairs that are running this month include one in Yorkshire which has been held for 40 years while the other, newly minted and with ambitious plans, launches in the renowned book-loving town of Hay-on-Wye.
New chapter opens
The first PBFA book fair for 30 years to be held in Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh borders will run on Sunday, July 22, at the restored Hay Castle, which reopened last year.
In 1977, local bookseller Richard Booth put on a homemade crown, marched through the streets of the town carrying a sceptre made from a plumbing pipe and declared himself King of Hay outside the Norman/Jacobean castle.
He issued passports, stamps and currency for his new nation, appointed his horse Goldie as prime minister and ruled the self-declared independent kingdom from the ramparts of the castle until his death in 2019.
Booth’s clever marketing ploy brought thousands of tourists as well as bibliophiles to the ailing town who set about opening dozens of bookshops and led to the launching of the prestigious annual Hay Festival.
Co-organiser of the new fair, Josh Boyd Green, who owns a bookshop in the town, said: “We will have 18 booksellers from across the UK stalling out in the castle’s Great Hall and all of Hay’s 20 bookshops will be open as well with more than a million books to choose from.
“This year’s fair will be a standalone event but in 2024 we’re hoping to hold a larger two-day fair with a series of events around secondhand books and book-collecting running alongside. Our plan is to grow this into a festival of secondhand books in the original Book Town.”
From TIMKC Books in Penzance, which specialises in modern firsts, is this first edition of Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by the late Irish poet Dennis O’Driscoll signed by the author and Heaney and published in 2008. It is priced £300 at the Hay book fair on July 22.
No lost sleep
The Ilkley Book Fair has been going for at least 40 years, says organiser Louise Harrison who has run the fair for 14 years.
“Apparently the exhibitors slept in the hall overnight in those days. Gerry Mosdell of the Junction Bookshop was one of the founder members of the PBFA and still attends regularly and I remember having a stall of antiquarian maps and prints at a combined literature festival and book fair in the Winter Garden in the late 70s,” she said.
The upcoming two-day fair runs in the West Yorkshire town’s King’s Hall and Winter Garden on Friday and Saturday, July 28-29.
Harrison has two local sponsors, Grove Books in Ilkley and Howgill Estates, with 40 dealers who are booked to exhibit including Stephen Conway bookbinder and bookseller in Halifax whose online stock includes an impressive selection of books on music, particularly modern jazz.
