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Memorie di un libraio
Memorie di un libraio è un ironico, colto, originale viaggio nel mondo dei libri in compagnia di uno dei più grandi autori del Novecento. George Orwell descrive le lunghe giornate trascorse come commesso in una libreria dell'usato, tra volumi polverosi e clienti stravaganti; ci fa apprezzare quei «buoni brutti libri» che, pur senza pretese, offrono un'oasi di pace; abbozza il ritratto del «recensore tipo», costretto a elogiare anche ciò che disprezza; dimostra cifre alla mano che leggere è un passatempo più economico di molti altri. Come osserva Romano Montroni nella sua appassionata prefazione, queste memorie di quasi un secolo fa non si limitano a rivelarci il volto meno noto di Orwell: ci raccontano anche il fascino di un mestiere senza tempo che assomiglia ancora oggi a una vocazione.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1936
13 people are currently reading
1495 people want to read
About the author
George Orwell
1,313 books51.1k followersEric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both fascism and stalinism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
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March 29, 2018
"When I worked in a second-hand bookshop — so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios — the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all.
Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who ‘wants a book for an invalid' (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover."
"In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money."
"Stamp-collectors are a strange, silent, fish-like breed, of all ages, but only of the male sex; women, apparently, fail to see the peculiar charm of gumming bits of coloured paper into albums. We also sold sixpenny horoscopes compiled by somebody who claimed to have foretold the Japanese earthquake. They were in sealed envelopes and I never opened one of them myself, but the people who bought them often came back and told us how ‘true’ their horoscopes had been. (Doubtless any horoscope seems ‘true’ if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.)"
http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles...
Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who ‘wants a book for an invalid' (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover."
"In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money."
"Stamp-collectors are a strange, silent, fish-like breed, of all ages, but only of the male sex; women, apparently, fail to see the peculiar charm of gumming bits of coloured paper into albums. We also sold sixpenny horoscopes compiled by somebody who claimed to have foretold the Japanese earthquake. They were in sealed envelopes and I never opened one of them myself, but the people who bought them often came back and told us how ‘true’ their horoscopes had been. (Doubtless any horoscope seems ‘true’ if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.)"
http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles...
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April 19, 2022Apparently little has changed about working with books and the public through the decades. Going by this essay, Jen Campbell’s Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores, and Gina Sheridan’s I Work at a Public Library, there are always people coming in asking for “that red book” they liked when they were young, without knowing what it was about, the title, or who wrote it. Books going into multiple editions must make this question harder to answer.
August 22, 2021
I read this essay by George Orwell because I generally love his essays and think he is one of the best writers ever. And then, a Goodreads group is forming on the reading of this essay so I joined it. My general view is that it is meant to be funny in mocking most of the customers that come into bookstores. He worked at a bookstore part-time and came to hate books and book buyers in the process and that’s a fair justification for an essay though possibly amusingly ironic for a writer of books. But as funny and charming it seemed to me at the beginning, I began to mark places I thought might not fly with general readers, or me, as most of us he would seem to disdain.
For instance, he talks of “paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles;” he speaks of many customers as a “nuisance,” noting “two well-known types of pest,” and so on. He thinks of many customers as “not quite certifiable lunatics” and about others that “there’s something moth-eaten and aimless about them.”
I know he is trying to be witty and smart when he says that he thinks “that Modern books for children are rather horrible things,” and when he speaks of mysteries as “that frightful torrent of trash” and when he makes it clear that “I never buy junk,” but what’s the overall take-away here? That he is a bit of a snob, that most genres beyond literary fiction are junk, which is not the kind of attitude I pick up from Down and Out in Paris in London or 1984. I get it that he is sad that most people who come into bookstores do not seem to be great readers of books, as he is, but by great readers he almost exclusively means readers of classics.
Note: I read and love literary fiction and classics, but I also read children’s books, YA, graphic novels, and try not to discriminate against particular genres. I work in a department that is full of literary snobs, I’m afraid, so for me this issue is personal.
For instance, he talks of “paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles;” he speaks of many customers as a “nuisance,” noting “two well-known types of pest,” and so on. He thinks of many customers as “not quite certifiable lunatics” and about others that “there’s something moth-eaten and aimless about them.”
I know he is trying to be witty and smart when he says that he thinks “that Modern books for children are rather horrible things,” and when he speaks of mysteries as “that frightful torrent of trash” and when he makes it clear that “I never buy junk,” but what’s the overall take-away here? That he is a bit of a snob, that most genres beyond literary fiction are junk, which is not the kind of attitude I pick up from Down and Out in Paris in London or 1984. I get it that he is sad that most people who come into bookstores do not seem to be great readers of books, as he is, but by great readers he almost exclusively means readers of classics.
Note: I read and love literary fiction and classics, but I also read children’s books, YA, graphic novels, and try not to discriminate against particular genres. I work in a department that is full of literary snobs, I’m afraid, so for me this issue is personal.
July 21, 2023
Bookshop Memories, first published in 1936, is a witty and perceptive essay by Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell. It is heavily anecdotal, as he reminisces about his time spent working as an assistant in an antiquarian bookshop.
George Orwell’s time as a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma was over, and he was back in London. In October 1934, his aunt Nellie had recommended him for a job as part-time assistant at “Booklover’s Corner” in South End Road, Hampstead, North London.
“Our shop stood exactly on the frontier between Hampstead and Camden Town, and we were frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors.”
The bookshop was described by one customer as “a gloomy cave of a place”. In George Orwell’s time the shop was run by his aunt Nellie’s friends, the Westropes, who also provided him with accommodation over the shop in 1934 and 1935. When he was living above the shop, George Orwell wrote “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, and the bookshop “Booklover’s Corner” was the inspiration for the book-selling passages in that work, as well as the source for his essay Bookshop Memories. He job-shared, working at the shop in the afternoons, so that he still had the mornings free to write whatever he chose, and the evenings to socialise.
George Orwell found there to be a wide variety of people who set foot in “Booklover’s Corner”. He describes literary snobs, judgmental wives, and all types of “general nuisances”. On a first reading, this is an amusing essay with a lightness of touch: a precursor to popular gift-books of jokey passages like “Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops” by Jen Campbell. However, with George Orwell there is always an extra dimension, because of how he judges and the way he tells his reminiscences. The humour is not at all soft and sentimental; his observations are astute, honest, and often rather barbed:
“In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.”
George Orwell comes across as arrogant and rather dismissive in this short piece, commenting:
“When I worked in a second-hand bookshop—so easily pictured, if you don’t work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios …”
and then going on to place his customers in broad types, much as he might have classified and grouped the books he was to sell. There was the:
“decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books”
Or the “stamp collectors … a strange…fish-like breed”. He is extremely dismissive of those who come into the bookshop merely to get warm, or of vague customers (often old women, he says) who know nothing of the book or the author of the book they wish to purchase, but might remember that it has a red cover. He talks of “pests and nuisances [who] haunt the place”.
Others who irritate him are the odd, or perhaps devious customers, who enjoy ordering expensive books for no apparent reason, since they have no intention of purchasing them. He is also very severe about people who are “first edition snobs”. On the whole, we get the impression that he is intolerant of his customers, and probably sums them up as soon as they come through the shop door!
However, we see that this patronising and intolerant attitude is not because George Orwell truly believes his customers are stupid, or of low intelligence, but that he turns people into stock characters for comedic effect. If it is not this, then to critically pick apart the customers of his work place, whilst being polite to their face would be the height of hypocrisy—and somehow I cannot associate this with George Orwell! He makes great use of sarcasm too:
“Doubtless any horoscope seems ‘true’ if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.”
It is interesting to compare such a bookshop with those of today. Some of the antiquarian bookshops I know (and their customers) seem to be in a time capsule, and are instantly recognisable from George Orwell’s description. Plus for the modern independent shops, selling new books, it is clear that there is no change in the frantic seasonal rush:
“At Christmas time we spent a feverish ten days struggling with Christmas cards and calendars, which are tiresome things to sell but good business while the season lasts.”
I gather that this side-line is now even more important. Fighting their corner against big corporations which want to buy them up, small independent bookshops now gain a large part of their regular incomes from greetings cards, bookmarks and all sorts of book “accessories”.
There is one difference between then and now, however. I don’t think the lending library area of bookshops exists at all now in England. George Orwell’s thoughts explore the psychology of customers who frequent “Booklover’s Corner”. A second hand bookshop, apart from selling sought-after antiquarian books, also sells cheaper books than a new bookshop—especially in the 1930s, before there were so many mass paperbacks. Therefore it was more accessible to those of limited income, who would also make use of the shop’s lending library. I like Helene Hanff’s observation in “84, Charing Cross Road” (another small antiquarian bookshop in London):
“I don’t browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.”
This leads me to what is possibly George Orwell’s main thrust of this essay. He sourly observes, and I think he is sadly being astute here:
“In a lending library you see people’s real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the ‘classical’ English novelists have dropped out of favour. It is simply useless to put Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc. into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, ‘Oh, but that’s old!’ and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to sell Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are ‘always meaning to’ read, and, like the Bible, he is widely known at second hand.”
A couple of years ago, I went into one of my favourite antiquarian bookshops, and was delighted to see some of the Heron Books “Centennial Dickens”. They are not valuable old editions, but published by a company dedicated to producing good quality library editions of classic books, who were active in the 1960s and 1970s. They are nice books to have, with their stitched bindings and gold-tooled uniform leather-effect covers. The set I have is of Charles Dickens’s complete works, including some hard-to-get stories and essays, and with the original illustrations. I was delighted, (though I still have one volume to find!)
Nevertheless, the shop proprietor paused when he saw I had selected a few, and left others there. “It’s a set,” he maintained, until I pointed out (as nicely as I could) that it wasn’t complete. At least 7 or 8 were missing. But it was his next question which stunned me. “Are you going to read them?” he asked. What did he think I wanted them for? Home decor? But that, sadly is probably exactly what he had thought.
Thus in comparing the motives of those who buy books as opposed to those who borrow them, George Orwell maintains:
“In a lending library you see people’s real tastes, not their pretend ones.”
I do agree that those who frequent libraries are actual readers, borrowing books for pure pleasure and/or study. The books they borrow do reveal their true taste in books. George Orwell shows his socialist credentials, claiming that this is a straightforward activity; these people are unpretentious. However, he considers buying books to be a different matter. Those who buy books, he says, want to keep them in their houses to make themselves appear intellectual.
This does seems a little highhanded and intolerant, to castigate someone for acquiring books and reading other, different library books. Is it really all for appearance and show, in order to look more intelligent and cultured than they actually are? After all they might get round to the “worthier” books, but need more time than a quick library loan might offer. It is moreover a kind of intellectual snobbery.
I asked another second-hand bookseller once, if he had any Large Print books, (which are published by specialist publishers, and only ever make it to new bookshops if individually ordered). “If we have any odd ones, they will be over there,” he said, waving dismissively, continuing with “I don’t know why some of these ever get to be published again in Large Print … rubbishy books!” I did tried to point out (again, nicely) that partially sighted people also like to have a variety of books, and be able to make their own choices. It wasn’t as if it’s an “optional extra”! (I don’t think he was convinced.)
So would George Orwell have liked to make a career as a bookseller? It seems ideal: flexible hours with time to accept journalistic work, or his own writing projects. He could see the advantages for himself, remarking waspishly:
“you start at a great advantage if you know anything about the insides of books. Most booksellers don’t.”
But …
“[My] employer put in a seventy-hour week, apart from constant expeditions out of hours to buy books—and it is an unhealthy life. As a rule a bookshop is horribly cold in winter, because if it is too warm the windows get misted over, and a bookseller lives on his windows. And books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet invented, and the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die.”
He was not tempted, saying poignantly:
“the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books.”
This hit home too. When beginning a three-year full-time further education course as a mature student, I remember the principal of the college saying:
“While you are here, you may well find that that you have to do so much reading that you lose your love of books. That happened to me, and I thought reading had been spoiled for me for ever. But I promise all of you, that the joy of reading a novel does come back!”
He was a wise man.
I feel that this essay was written in the spirit of entertaining his readers, whilst revealing a truth. But which truth? I don’t believe George Orwell really holds bookshops and their clientele in contempt. Rather, he finds that shopping for books (or selling books) amongst the types of individuals he describes, may often be amusing and entertaining, but may make for a frustrating experience.
So was George Orwell’s final thesis to be that working in a bookshop would only ever prevent a keen reader from enjoying books? That was never my personal experience. For several years I would clandestinely read under the counter, or hide in a corner to read whilst ostensibly filing—in both libraries and bookshops—before going back to full time education. (Only sometimes, of course.) Hopefully George Orwell was also to rediscover his love of reading, when this short spell of working in a bookshop was only a distant memory.
In February 1935 George Orwell was forced to seek other lodgings and he moved to 77 Parliament Hill. Until recently (1984, oddly enough) it was called “The Prompt Corner”, and was a chess-players’ cafe. Now it is a pizza parlour! There is a blue plaque, commemorating George Orwell’s time there, just to the left of the door.
Should you read this essay? Yes, if you have ever worked in a bookshop or a library. Even if you have not, you will probably have frequented them, so may well recognise some aspects and find this essay amusing. In many way it has not dated, as it is about human nature, which does not change.
And after all, it will probably only take you half an hour to read.
George Orwell’s time as a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma was over, and he was back in London. In October 1934, his aunt Nellie had recommended him for a job as part-time assistant at “Booklover’s Corner” in South End Road, Hampstead, North London.
“Our shop stood exactly on the frontier between Hampstead and Camden Town, and we were frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors.”
The bookshop was described by one customer as “a gloomy cave of a place”. In George Orwell’s time the shop was run by his aunt Nellie’s friends, the Westropes, who also provided him with accommodation over the shop in 1934 and 1935. When he was living above the shop, George Orwell wrote “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, and the bookshop “Booklover’s Corner” was the inspiration for the book-selling passages in that work, as well as the source for his essay Bookshop Memories. He job-shared, working at the shop in the afternoons, so that he still had the mornings free to write whatever he chose, and the evenings to socialise.
George Orwell found there to be a wide variety of people who set foot in “Booklover’s Corner”. He describes literary snobs, judgmental wives, and all types of “general nuisances”. On a first reading, this is an amusing essay with a lightness of touch: a precursor to popular gift-books of jokey passages like “Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops” by Jen Campbell. However, with George Orwell there is always an extra dimension, because of how he judges and the way he tells his reminiscences. The humour is not at all soft and sentimental; his observations are astute, honest, and often rather barbed:
“In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.”
George Orwell comes across as arrogant and rather dismissive in this short piece, commenting:
“When I worked in a second-hand bookshop—so easily pictured, if you don’t work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios …”
and then going on to place his customers in broad types, much as he might have classified and grouped the books he was to sell. There was the:
“decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books”
Or the “stamp collectors … a strange…fish-like breed”. He is extremely dismissive of those who come into the bookshop merely to get warm, or of vague customers (often old women, he says) who know nothing of the book or the author of the book they wish to purchase, but might remember that it has a red cover. He talks of “pests and nuisances [who] haunt the place”.
Others who irritate him are the odd, or perhaps devious customers, who enjoy ordering expensive books for no apparent reason, since they have no intention of purchasing them. He is also very severe about people who are “first edition snobs”. On the whole, we get the impression that he is intolerant of his customers, and probably sums them up as soon as they come through the shop door!
However, we see that this patronising and intolerant attitude is not because George Orwell truly believes his customers are stupid, or of low intelligence, but that he turns people into stock characters for comedic effect. If it is not this, then to critically pick apart the customers of his work place, whilst being polite to their face would be the height of hypocrisy—and somehow I cannot associate this with George Orwell! He makes great use of sarcasm too:
“Doubtless any horoscope seems ‘true’ if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.”
It is interesting to compare such a bookshop with those of today. Some of the antiquarian bookshops I know (and their customers) seem to be in a time capsule, and are instantly recognisable from George Orwell’s description. Plus for the modern independent shops, selling new books, it is clear that there is no change in the frantic seasonal rush:
“At Christmas time we spent a feverish ten days struggling with Christmas cards and calendars, which are tiresome things to sell but good business while the season lasts.”
I gather that this side-line is now even more important. Fighting their corner against big corporations which want to buy them up, small independent bookshops now gain a large part of their regular incomes from greetings cards, bookmarks and all sorts of book “accessories”.
There is one difference between then and now, however. I don’t think the lending library area of bookshops exists at all now in England. George Orwell’s thoughts explore the psychology of customers who frequent “Booklover’s Corner”. A second hand bookshop, apart from selling sought-after antiquarian books, also sells cheaper books than a new bookshop—especially in the 1930s, before there were so many mass paperbacks. Therefore it was more accessible to those of limited income, who would also make use of the shop’s lending library. I like Helene Hanff’s observation in “84, Charing Cross Road” (another small antiquarian bookshop in London):
“I don’t browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it.”
This leads me to what is possibly George Orwell’s main thrust of this essay. He sourly observes, and I think he is sadly being astute here:
“In a lending library you see people’s real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the ‘classical’ English novelists have dropped out of favour. It is simply useless to put Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc. into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, ‘Oh, but that’s old!’ and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to sell Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are ‘always meaning to’ read, and, like the Bible, he is widely known at second hand.”
A couple of years ago, I went into one of my favourite antiquarian bookshops, and was delighted to see some of the Heron Books “Centennial Dickens”. They are not valuable old editions, but published by a company dedicated to producing good quality library editions of classic books, who were active in the 1960s and 1970s. They are nice books to have, with their stitched bindings and gold-tooled uniform leather-effect covers. The set I have is of Charles Dickens’s complete works, including some hard-to-get stories and essays, and with the original illustrations. I was delighted, (though I still have one volume to find!)
Nevertheless, the shop proprietor paused when he saw I had selected a few, and left others there. “It’s a set,” he maintained, until I pointed out (as nicely as I could) that it wasn’t complete. At least 7 or 8 were missing. But it was his next question which stunned me. “Are you going to read them?” he asked. What did he think I wanted them for? Home decor? But that, sadly is probably exactly what he had thought.
Thus in comparing the motives of those who buy books as opposed to those who borrow them, George Orwell maintains:
“In a lending library you see people’s real tastes, not their pretend ones.”
I do agree that those who frequent libraries are actual readers, borrowing books for pure pleasure and/or study. The books they borrow do reveal their true taste in books. George Orwell shows his socialist credentials, claiming that this is a straightforward activity; these people are unpretentious. However, he considers buying books to be a different matter. Those who buy books, he says, want to keep them in their houses to make themselves appear intellectual.
This does seems a little highhanded and intolerant, to castigate someone for acquiring books and reading other, different library books. Is it really all for appearance and show, in order to look more intelligent and cultured than they actually are? After all they might get round to the “worthier” books, but need more time than a quick library loan might offer. It is moreover a kind of intellectual snobbery.
I asked another second-hand bookseller once, if he had any Large Print books, (which are published by specialist publishers, and only ever make it to new bookshops if individually ordered). “If we have any odd ones, they will be over there,” he said, waving dismissively, continuing with “I don’t know why some of these ever get to be published again in Large Print … rubbishy books!” I did tried to point out (again, nicely) that partially sighted people also like to have a variety of books, and be able to make their own choices. It wasn’t as if it’s an “optional extra”! (I don’t think he was convinced.)
So would George Orwell have liked to make a career as a bookseller? It seems ideal: flexible hours with time to accept journalistic work, or his own writing projects. He could see the advantages for himself, remarking waspishly:
“you start at a great advantage if you know anything about the insides of books. Most booksellers don’t.”
But …
“[My] employer put in a seventy-hour week, apart from constant expeditions out of hours to buy books—and it is an unhealthy life. As a rule a bookshop is horribly cold in winter, because if it is too warm the windows get misted over, and a bookseller lives on his windows. And books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet invented, and the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die.”
He was not tempted, saying poignantly:
“the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books.”
This hit home too. When beginning a three-year full-time further education course as a mature student, I remember the principal of the college saying:
“While you are here, you may well find that that you have to do so much reading that you lose your love of books. That happened to me, and I thought reading had been spoiled for me for ever. But I promise all of you, that the joy of reading a novel does come back!”
He was a wise man.
I feel that this essay was written in the spirit of entertaining his readers, whilst revealing a truth. But which truth? I don’t believe George Orwell really holds bookshops and their clientele in contempt. Rather, he finds that shopping for books (or selling books) amongst the types of individuals he describes, may often be amusing and entertaining, but may make for a frustrating experience.
So was George Orwell’s final thesis to be that working in a bookshop would only ever prevent a keen reader from enjoying books? That was never my personal experience. For several years I would clandestinely read under the counter, or hide in a corner to read whilst ostensibly filing—in both libraries and bookshops—before going back to full time education. (Only sometimes, of course.) Hopefully George Orwell was also to rediscover his love of reading, when this short spell of working in a bookshop was only a distant memory.
In February 1935 George Orwell was forced to seek other lodgings and he moved to 77 Parliament Hill. Until recently (1984, oddly enough) it was called “The Prompt Corner”, and was a chess-players’ cafe. Now it is a pizza parlour! There is a blue plaque, commemorating George Orwell’s time there, just to the left of the door.
Should you read this essay? Yes, if you have ever worked in a bookshop or a library. Even if you have not, you will probably have frequented them, so may well recognise some aspects and find this essay amusing. In many way it has not dated, as it is about human nature, which does not change.
And after all, it will probably only take you half an hour to read.
October 11, 2016
GEORGE Orwell's "Bookshop Memories" is an essay about his experience working in a second-hand bookshop in London. The writer is at his sarcastic best in this one.
He writes about snobs who are more interested in buying "first editions" rather than literary works. He also writes about people who order books but never come to pick them up, oriental students who haggle over the price of cheap textbooks, and women who were shopping for birthday gifts for their nephews.
He laments over the rarity of really bookish people. If book readers were rare in 1936 when the essay was written, then now it must be like searching for an oasis in the Sahara or the Kalahari desert.
I know readership has greatly declined from my schooldays in the '60s and early '70s. Besides, most bookshops and libraries have vanished in Karachi as few people are interested in reading books. The majority is interested in watching the Idiot Box and turning into Idiots with a capital I.
He writes about snobs who are more interested in buying "first editions" rather than literary works. He also writes about people who order books but never come to pick them up, oriental students who haggle over the price of cheap textbooks, and women who were shopping for birthday gifts for their nephews.
He laments over the rarity of really bookish people. If book readers were rare in 1936 when the essay was written, then now it must be like searching for an oasis in the Sahara or the Kalahari desert.
I know readership has greatly declined from my schooldays in the '60s and early '70s. Besides, most bookshops and libraries have vanished in Karachi as few people are interested in reading books. The majority is interested in watching the Idiot Box and turning into Idiots with a capital I.
December 21, 2024
‘The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer.’
I once attempted to explain to my screen-addicted son James, then 14, the heady joy of smelling an old book, in this case a 1939 hardback edition of Norman Douglas’s South Wind, printed on beautiful paper in the United States. James looked at me askance, a look with which I am all too familiar.
The passage of time does strange things. The ordinary everyday becomes just a memory: for example, the lending library in a second-hand bookshop. The essential can become passé: reading a book when you could be glued to a screen (I do know I am writing this on a screen). Two things stand out for me with this wonderful George Orwell story, apart from his beautiful writing, firstly, it’s a striking snapshot of a very particular time and place and secondly it illustrates the difference between romance and reality. Customers regularly make inquiries of this type: ‘Do you have Mill on the Floss by TS Eliot?’ Sigh.
Orwell’s bookshop of the mid-1930s might have been frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors, but is replete with old lady customers of vague request, moth-eaten men who may or may not smell of bread crusts, and lunatics, paranoiacs in particular. Orwell acknowledges the difference between the books people buy and the ones they borrow from the lending library; the latter reflecting their actual taste rather than what they think they should be reading.
I really like this glimpse of Orwell’s society at the time, especially with his satirical touch. I have a vivid picture of the colourful habitués, the cold and dust of the establishment, and the perils of losing your love for something when the commercial reality of trade overwhelms the romance of the individual tome.
I once attempted to explain to my screen-addicted son James, then 14, the heady joy of smelling an old book, in this case a 1939 hardback edition of Norman Douglas’s South Wind, printed on beautiful paper in the United States. James looked at me askance, a look with which I am all too familiar.
The passage of time does strange things. The ordinary everyday becomes just a memory: for example, the lending library in a second-hand bookshop. The essential can become passé: reading a book when you could be glued to a screen (I do know I am writing this on a screen). Two things stand out for me with this wonderful George Orwell story, apart from his beautiful writing, firstly, it’s a striking snapshot of a very particular time and place and secondly it illustrates the difference between romance and reality. Customers regularly make inquiries of this type: ‘Do you have Mill on the Floss by TS Eliot?’ Sigh.
Orwell’s bookshop of the mid-1930s might have been frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors, but is replete with old lady customers of vague request, moth-eaten men who may or may not smell of bread crusts, and lunatics, paranoiacs in particular. Orwell acknowledges the difference between the books people buy and the ones they borrow from the lending library; the latter reflecting their actual taste rather than what they think they should be reading.
I really like this glimpse of Orwell’s society at the time, especially with his satirical touch. I have a vivid picture of the colourful habitués, the cold and dust of the establishment, and the perils of losing your love for something when the commercial reality of trade overwhelms the romance of the individual tome.
September 1, 2021
George Orwell was a part-time bookseller in London for several years. He wrote this essay in 1936 about his experiences. The essay is humorous and entertaining, but Orwell also gives the impression of being a curmudgeon. Bookselling, like any customer service job, does require patience (perhaps more than Orwell possesses), and an awareness that people have different tastes and education. Orwell wrote, "Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten percent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one." He did not understand how people could be attracted to genre fiction such as detective novels.
Orwell is sarcastic and funny as he describes some of the customers, such as the dear old lady who "doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover."
The essay does bring us back in time to when there were lending libraries in bookstores, when independent bookstores were financially successful, and there was no computer database to help the employee.
It was rather sad that he lost his love of books while he was working at the bookshop, dusting them and hauling them to and fro. He wrote, "The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles."
Orwell is sarcastic and funny as he describes some of the customers, such as the dear old lady who "doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover."
The essay does bring us back in time to when there were lending libraries in bookstores, when independent bookstores were financially successful, and there was no computer database to help the employee.
It was rather sad that he lost his love of books while he was working at the bookshop, dusting them and hauling them to and fro. He wrote, "The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles."
July 20, 2016
Orwell's sarcastic humor is good for a few chuckles in this essay about his time spent working in a London bookshop.
September 4, 2021
A very light Orwell essay, where he reminisces about his time working in a bookshop, which, being the serious writer he was, clearly had its frustrations. “I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one.”
He discovered things about both patrons and books that he probably wished he hadn’t. But those of us who have served the public will likely relate to the sometimes mocking thoughts that exist behind our tolerant smiles, and he makes some brilliant politically incorrect barbs about, for example, “vague-minded women” and a “decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts.”
Great fun if, like me, you’re a lover of both books and sarcasm.
He discovered things about both patrons and books that he probably wished he hadn’t. But those of us who have served the public will likely relate to the sometimes mocking thoughts that exist behind our tolerant smiles, and he makes some brilliant politically incorrect barbs about, for example, “vague-minded women” and a “decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts.”
Great fun if, like me, you’re a lover of both books and sarcasm.
February 28, 2019
"But the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro."
February 8, 2021
Le persone davvero interessate ai libri sono rare, ma coloro che pensano di esserlo sono molto più numerosi. Riconoscerli è facilissimo: entrano in libreria e la prima cosa che fanno è presentarsi come «appassionati di libri», poi non fanno che ripeterti che «amano i libri». Sulle magliette che indossano o sulle loro borse ci sono slogan che spiegano con precisione fino a che punto pensano di adorare i libri, ma il modo più sicuro per identificarli è che mai, nemmeno una volta, ne comprano uno.
December 21, 2021
"Tutti gli scrittori sono vanitosi, egoisti e pigri, e in fondo alle loro motivazioni si nasconde un mistero. Scrivere un libro è una terribile, estenuante battaglia, come il lungo assedio di una qualche dolorosa malattia. Nessuno accetterebbe mai una sfida di questo tipo, se a spingerlo non fosse qualche demone a cui non può resistere e che non può comprendere."
February 29, 2020
My best friend once gave me a copy of George Orwell’s essays. It was my first aquaintance with Orwell and I liked him instantly. And although I loved 1984 and think that Animal Farm was fairly good, I think that he’s actually more of a nonfiction writer. Moreover, in reading his essays one gets a glimpse of Orwell’s true personality. But enough of this.
Bookshop memories has the characteristic irony of works such as Marrakech, The Spike, and How the Poor Die. It’s not as deep as an essay by, say, Bacon or Montaigne. However, it’s a very short text and an a fun read.
Bookshop memories has the characteristic irony of works such as Marrakech, The Spike, and How the Poor Die. It’s not as deep as an essay by, say, Bacon or Montaigne. However, it’s a very short text and an a fun read.
October 5, 2022
“Ci sono libri che si leggono più e più volte, libri che diventano parte dell’arredo mentale e influenzano profondamente il modo di vedere la vita, libri che sfogliamo senza però leggere mai integralmente, e libri che leggiamo d’un fiato per dimenticarli la settimana successiva.”
February 2, 2020
A must read for bibliophiles, this essay is characteristic of Orwell's wit and mordant sense of humour.
August 1, 2014
I've been working through Orwell's narrative essays for about a week and this is by far one of the shortest and one of the most laid back. It reads as a memoir and focuses more on the declining culture of bookishness among the general public. As you can imagine, if this was a concern in Orwell's day it certainly is now. But overall the scene is the same as it is now. The phenomena Orwell describes still happen to this day and I can vouch for them from personal experiences. Many of the types of people he describes as inhabiting the bookshop on a day to day basis still exist. As Amazon memberships are on the up I've no doubt that the little microcosms of musty old ladies and people who order books but never pick them up may decline but they will still be around in twenty years. Heck, if this essay, written before nineteen fifty, is correct then they have been around for almost eighty years already. For as long as bookshops remain, this essay will retain its relevance.
May 30, 2020
Only 14 pages long this was a very fast read. I really like sarcastic Orwell. He speaks a truth I found quite often: if something becomes your job, you start viewing something you used to love differently. He started disliking books while working in a bookshop. If you have to deal with something everyday and your living depends on it, then it is not just a pleasure anymore, it becomes a duty. I did an internship at a bookshop, because I thought I would be dealing with books all day, reading them, enjoying them, talking to people that also love books. In the end I didn't read one page in those 3 months, but carried a lot of books, listed a lot of books in an Excel spread sheet - after a while you don't even look at the books any more, they just become numbers.
June 23, 2015
A quirky, sardonic, and quick read. I love Orwell!
May 25, 2020
An interesting essay on Orwell's experiences working in a second-hand bookstore.
You can read it here:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-...
You can read it here:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-...
November 8, 2016
I wonder if working at a book-shop will affect my love for books or reading!
March 31, 2021
Un libriccino piccolo, nemmeno 100 pagine, sei saggi di George Orwell, lo scrittore di 1984 e La fattoria degli animali, tra gli altri. Qui Orwell parla in prima persona a proposito della sua esperienza come commesso in una libreria dell'usato, del costo dei libri, della giornata tipo di un recensore e soprattutto, in quello che a mio parere è il saggio più importante, della libertà intellettuale degli scrittori nelle nostre società liberali e negli stati totalitari. Orwell fu molto attivo in politica e nel sociale e in quel saggio mette a confronto le due posizioni politiche, le due società, non risparmiando la verità su quella che è la situazione nella Inghilterra del suo periodo, lontana da essere quel modello di verità che sembra. E non mancano le affinità con il mondo contemporaneo...
Una lettura all'apparenza semplice ma che necessita di più attenzione soprattutto in alcuni passaggi del saggio "La prevenzione della letteratura".
Una lettura all'apparenza semplice ma che necessita di più attenzione soprattutto in alcuni passaggi del saggio "La prevenzione della letteratura".
April 19, 2023
Scrivere un libro è una terribile, estenuante battaglia, come il lungo assedio di una qualche dolorosa malattia. Nessuno accetterebbe mai una sfida di questo tipo, se a spingerlo non fosse qualche demone a cui non può resistere e che non può comprendere. Tutto ciò che sappiamo è che questo demone è semplicemente quello stesso istinto che fa piangere un bambino per attirare l'attenzione. Eppure è vero anche che non è possibile scrivere niente di leggibile se non si combatte costantemente per cancellare la propria personalità. La buona prosa è il vetro di una finestra.
Per scrivere con un linguaggio chiaro ed efficace si deve pensare senza paura, e se si pensa senza paura non si può essere politicamente ortodossi.
Ogni scrittore che adotta una mentalità totalitaria, che giustifichi la persecuzione e la falsificazione della realtà, distrugge in tal modo se stesso in quanto scrittore.
L'immaginazione, come certi animali selvatici, non si riprodurrà in cattività.
Per scrivere con un linguaggio chiaro ed efficace si deve pensare senza paura, e se si pensa senza paura non si può essere politicamente ortodossi.
Ogni scrittore che adotta una mentalità totalitaria, che giustifichi la persecuzione e la falsificazione della realtà, distrugge in tal modo se stesso in quanto scrittore.
L'immaginazione, come certi animali selvatici, non si riprodurrà in cattività.
March 25, 2021
Orwell è molto in voga negli ultimi anni, ma - a livello scolastico e in generale tra i lettori - ci si limita troppo spesso alle sue due opere più famose e riuscite. Egli fu tuttavia anche un giornalista, un critico, un recensore e, pure, un libraio.
Questo piccolo libricino ne raccoglie alcuni articoli: si parte dalla sua esperienza lavorativa in una libreria dell'usato, che è ancora molto attuale e valida anche per altri contesti come le biblioteche, per poi passare a considerazioni sulla lettura e sulla scrittura. In maniera diretta, Orwell fa ironia sui clienti più esigenti (ma anche più confusi), così come sui recensori e sulle letture commerciali, riprendendo quello che G. K. Chesterton definiva "buon brutto libro".
Una selezione mirata, attualissima, con testi brevi che dipingono fedelmente il mondo dei libri in molti suoi aspetti socio-culturali.
Questo piccolo libricino ne raccoglie alcuni articoli: si parte dalla sua esperienza lavorativa in una libreria dell'usato, che è ancora molto attuale e valida anche per altri contesti come le biblioteche, per poi passare a considerazioni sulla lettura e sulla scrittura. In maniera diretta, Orwell fa ironia sui clienti più esigenti (ma anche più confusi), così come sui recensori e sulle letture commerciali, riprendendo quello che G. K. Chesterton definiva "buon brutto libro".
Una selezione mirata, attualissima, con testi brevi che dipingono fedelmente il mondo dei libri in molti suoi aspetti socio-culturali.
July 25, 2022
Amo follemente i piccoli grandi libri della garzanti! Il primo testo parla della sua esperienza svervante di lavoro in una libreria ed è divertentissimo, mi ha ricordato "Una vita da libraio" di Bythell che mi era piaciuto tantissimo. Altri testi degni di nota sono ovviamente quelli in cui ci racconta per quale motivo scrive e un piccolo saggio sull'importanza della libertà di parola.
Orwell poi ha uno stile chiaro e diretto che non lascia dubbi interpretativi o zone d'ombra e incomprensione.
Orwell poi ha uno stile chiaro e diretto che non lascia dubbi interpretativi o zone d'ombra e incomprensione.
October 12, 2021
The writing is wonderful, of course its Orwell, but there was much snobbery in it towards people who read mysteries or romances instead of Hemingway or Shaw. Though if you are George Orwell, perhaps you've more than earned the right to be snobbish about that.
March 3, 2022
Attenzione. Se avete acquistato "Letteratura palestra di libertà", in questo libro trovate alcuni interventi già presenti in quello di Mondadori.
July 19, 2023
Wait a minute … the opening chapter of “keep the aspidistra flying” is basically Orwell’s personal account
That’s pretty neat !
That’s pretty neat !
October 23, 2022
Piccolo libretto composto da sei saggi, scritti tra il 1936 e il 1946, di George Orwell.
Amo Orwell! Lo chiamo scherzosamente "mio marito", amo la sua intelligenza, la sua capacità di cogliere la realtà e i suoi "pattern", mi ritrovo nel suo battersi per la "verità" e la libertà di pensiero, e nella sua natura "rabbiosa" nei confronti delle ingiustizie... E dei libri scritti male!
Soprattutto adoro il suo stile e ho la certezza che leggere qualcosa di suo non è mai uno spreco di tempo perché c'è sempre qualche cosa che mi interessa.
Questi brevi saggi hanno confermato la mia opinione, hanno l'unico difetto di essere un po' troppo calati nel contesto dell'epoca e per questo a tratti risultano poco significativi al lettore odierno. Ad esempio, alcuni libri citati sono effettivamente passati di moda. In altri casi, invece, le sue parole appaiono di incredibile attualità proprio grazie all'abilità dello scrittore di cogliere le costanti delle situazioni sociali.
- Memorie di un libraio. È l'Orwell di Fiorirà l'aspidistra. La prospettiva di un commesso frustrato, ma con qualche interessante osservazione sul mondo dei libri.
- Buoni brutti libri. Un saggio su quelli che io chiamo "libri di intrattenimento". Critico, diretto, senza peli sulla lingua; legnate persino a libri ancora oggi apprezzati come Dracula e i libri su Sherlock Holmes... Adoroh! :D
- La prevenzione della letteratura. Scritto sulla libertà di stampa, che "se vuol dire qualcosa, vuol dire libertà di critica e di opposizione". È del 1946, ma strabiliante è la somiglianza con oggi perché "non è necessario vivere in un paese totalitario. Il semplice fatto che prevalgano certe idee può diffondere un veleno che rende un argomento dopo l'altro inaffrontabile in letteratura".
- Libri contro sigarette. La dimostrazione che leggere non è un passatempo costoso. È il saggio che mi ha interessato meno.
- Confessioni di un recensore. Un po' un luogo comune sui recensori, una ritratto ironico di se stesso, scritto dannatamente bene. Quando si dice "sentire la voce di uno scrittore"... Splendido!
- Perché scrivo. Riprende un po' l'infanzia dello scrittore e il suo rapporto con lo scrivere, con la parola e i suoi e i motivi che portano a voler scrivere.
Consigliato a tutti.
Amo Orwell! Lo chiamo scherzosamente "mio marito", amo la sua intelligenza, la sua capacità di cogliere la realtà e i suoi "pattern", mi ritrovo nel suo battersi per la "verità" e la libertà di pensiero, e nella sua natura "rabbiosa" nei confronti delle ingiustizie... E dei libri scritti male!
Soprattutto adoro il suo stile e ho la certezza che leggere qualcosa di suo non è mai uno spreco di tempo perché c'è sempre qualche cosa che mi interessa.
Questi brevi saggi hanno confermato la mia opinione, hanno l'unico difetto di essere un po' troppo calati nel contesto dell'epoca e per questo a tratti risultano poco significativi al lettore odierno. Ad esempio, alcuni libri citati sono effettivamente passati di moda. In altri casi, invece, le sue parole appaiono di incredibile attualità proprio grazie all'abilità dello scrittore di cogliere le costanti delle situazioni sociali.
- Memorie di un libraio. È l'Orwell di Fiorirà l'aspidistra. La prospettiva di un commesso frustrato, ma con qualche interessante osservazione sul mondo dei libri.
- Buoni brutti libri. Un saggio su quelli che io chiamo "libri di intrattenimento". Critico, diretto, senza peli sulla lingua; legnate persino a libri ancora oggi apprezzati come Dracula e i libri su Sherlock Holmes... Adoroh! :D
- La prevenzione della letteratura. Scritto sulla libertà di stampa, che "se vuol dire qualcosa, vuol dire libertà di critica e di opposizione". È del 1946, ma strabiliante è la somiglianza con oggi perché "non è necessario vivere in un paese totalitario. Il semplice fatto che prevalgano certe idee può diffondere un veleno che rende un argomento dopo l'altro inaffrontabile in letteratura".
- Libri contro sigarette. La dimostrazione che leggere non è un passatempo costoso. È il saggio che mi ha interessato meno.
- Confessioni di un recensore. Un po' un luogo comune sui recensori, una ritratto ironico di se stesso, scritto dannatamente bene. Quando si dice "sentire la voce di uno scrittore"... Splendido!
- Perché scrivo. Riprende un po' l'infanzia dello scrittore e il suo rapporto con lo scrivere, con la parola e i suoi e i motivi che portano a voler scrivere.
Consigliato a tutti.
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