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Oliver Darkshire

Once Upon a Tome: The misadventures of a rare bookseller

Once Upon a Tome: The misadventures of a rare bookseller

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"Once Upon a Tome" is a humorous story of life in one of the world's oldest bookshops, featuring eccentric clientele, mysterious cupboards, poisoned books, and a resident ghost. Oliver Darkshire fell in love with the store's disorganization and old-fashioned staff, and the book is a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 07 September 2023
Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd


Welcome to Sotheran's, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabeled keys, poisoned books, and some things that aren't even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice.

Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd on Sackville Street (est. 1761) to interview for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, he was soon balancing teetering stacks of first editions, fending off nonagenarian widows, and trying not to upset the store's resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram).

Darkshire came to love Sotheran's, not just for its illustrious history (or for producing the most cursed book of all time), but also for its joyous disorganization and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff, whose mere glance may cause a computer to burst into flames.

By turns unhinged and earnestly dog-eared, Once Upon a Tome is the rather colorful story of life in one of the world's oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling.

Weight: 178g
Dimension: 198 x 127 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529177121

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