posted on 12 Jun 2024

Remembering radical bookselling in the 1980s

In the late-1970s and 80s radical and alternative booksellers and publishers flourished. In those distant pre-internet days, anyone wanting literature that explained and supported radical causes had to actively look for it in shops that specialised in its sale and distribution. Most of these enterprises survived precariously on a shoestring, but a few, such as the feminist publishing house, Virago Press, would become household names.

Over the past five years a group made up largely of booksellers past and present has set about documenting this rapidly disappearing history of radical bookselling. The group grew out of a conference on the history of radical bookselling held in 2019. Research, publications and periodic newsletters are organised by Dave Cope of Left on the Shelf, a secondhand bookseller specialising in radical literature and printed ephemera (and can all be downloaded from the Left on the Shelf website).

Regular guest contributor to the Letterpress Project, Alun Severn worked in radical bookselling in the mid-80s and has written a reminiscence of this time that he has entitled Remembering Third World Publications which you can find in the latest issue of the group’s newsletter, Radical Bookselling History (#8, May 2024, starting on p.12).

We hope that others may be interested in this glimpse into what now seems a very different – and increasingly distant – world of bookselling.

 

June 2024

 

Elsewhere on Letterpress:

A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley

 

 

A Bite of the Apple: a life with books, writers and Virago by Lennie Goodings