While researching John Bowerman Ferguson and the BC Stationery and Printing Company, I came across this ad, which illuminates (albeit fuzzily) what readers could find on the shelves of BC bookstores in 1887: For sixty cents per volume, readers could walk away with now-classic works by Charles Dickens, Johnathan Swift, Victor Hugo, and Sir Walter… Continue reading At the Bookstore, 1887: Bestsellers for Sixty Cents
Category: Books for Sale
At the Bookstore, 1888: Zola’s La Terre
One of the books for sale at BC bookstores in 1888 caused a great deal of hand-wringing and finger-wagging among members of the book trade—and, no doubt, a large number of discrete purchases by curious and more adventurous readers. The book was Émile Zola's The Soil, the English translation of his La Terre, first published in France… Continue reading At the Bookstore, 1888: Zola’s La Terre
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Lily Alice Lefevre: First Female Book Author Published in British Columbia
It is BC Book Day and International Women's Day, and what better way to honour both than to highlight this milestone in BC's bookselling history: the 1895 release of Lions' Gate and Other Verses by Lily Alice Lefevre, the first book (I believe, though I stand to be corrected) written by a woman and published by… Continue reading Lily Alice Lefevre: First Female Book Author Published in British Columbia
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At the Bookstore, 1861: Chambers’s Information for the People
Chambers's Information for the People, one of the volume sets featured in an 1861 ad for Seth Tilley's Colonial Book Store in New Westminster, offered everything "that is requisite for a generally well-informed man in the less highly educated portions of society"—or so claimed the book's preface. "Designed in an especial manner for the People, though adapted… Continue reading At the Bookstore, 1861: Chambers’s Information for the People
