Exciting but sad visit to Penn Bookshop

Last Thursday a band of a dozen Bibliomaniacs took the mini bus to the village of Penn in Buckinghamshire. This was our third visit to the shop and sadly would be the last. The shop closed last year but many thousands of books were left on the shelves. The owner kindly contacted us and we were allowed to come and take our pick of the leftover stock. We divided into small teams and searched through the huge number of books. Although we did not stumble across an unknown Gutenberg Bible, we did come away with a few hundred volumes. We were particularly pleased to find ninety books with illustrated cloth covers dating from the 1880s until the 1930s, which will provide the basis for an attractive catalogue .