Starting to make notes for Once upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller was daunting. How do you start to talk about a bookstore with as much history as Henry Sotheran Ltd., which lays claim to being the oldest antiquarian bookstore still operating under the same name—despite being a mere whippersnapper in the grand scheme of things, at a meager 262 years?
The thing about antiquarian booksellers is that the booksellers who came before us really, really don’t want anyone seeing their paperwork. Historically speaking, bookstores are oddly, almost eerily, susceptible to disaster and scandal. In short, they go bust, they explode, people steal all the floorboards and make for the hills, and so on. Unlikely catastrophe and financial ruin follow booksellers like a vocational curse.
