posted on 29 Dec 2015

The Bookshop On The Quay by Patricia Lynch

A young boy leaves his home in the rural west of Ireland and heads to Dublin in search of his uncle Tim. He meets nothing but kindness on the way and is saved from life on the street by the owners of the Four Masters bookshop on Ormond Quay where he becomes the shop-boy.

To be honest, the story is slight and simple - Patricia Lynch specialised in fantasy writing for children and this was a quite rare excursion for her into the fiction of real life. So I don't think this is a book that stands out for the quality of the story or the writing style - but I do love it and I love it for how it looks and feels. This is a great example of how a well kept first edition can be an experience in its own right even if the content is decidedly average.

The book I have was published in 1956 by J.M. Dent and is a first edition with a nice vibrant green cloth binding with a gold stamped title on the spine. It's unusually clean and tight for a book of this age and I would guess that it has spent much of its life being unread on a shelf or perhaps even in a box. The book has an absolutely fabulous cover (again in great condition) by the illustrator, Peggy Fortnum, and this is echoed again inside in colour opposite the title page. Fortnum is a renowned children's book illustrator and was the artist who drew Paddington Bear and his adventures. She provides more black and white pen illustrations throughout - they are  impressionistic and quickly done but capture the spirit of the story perfectly.

Copies of the book in reprint are easy to get hold of but have nothing like the presence of the first edition. You'll pay more for a good clean copy of the original - anything up to £40 - and those advertised on the internet at the moment are not as crisp and clean as mine. I found mine in a charity shop some time ago and it just goes to show that there are still bargains out there: is that enought to get you hunting?

 

Terry Potter

December 2015