A whole pack of pelicans has flown onto our shelves! Best come by and browse them where they’re perched above fiction before they take flight again!

As the first weekend of Fringe kicks off, we thought we’d highlight some lovely little secondhand treasures in our drama section. Wishing everyone an excellent festival season!

Does anybody recognise this view? It’s from a late-Victorian collection of photographs undergoing cataloguing, with the bulk of the other 100+ images being of places in Edinburgh, Fife or the Borders. This one has me stumped though. Any leads gratefully received.

Thought we’d hop on the Odyssey bandwagon and share the copy on our shelves at the moment— the first duodecimo printing of Pope’s landmark translation, printed over 1725-1726 in five volumes. The fifth volume also includes Pope’s translation of Homer’s Battle of the Frogs and Mice.

Some gorgeous books that are about to migrate from the sunny window to the shelves— there’s everything from fairy tales to Scottish poetry, with iconic children’s books and books on brewing and insects for good measure.

Things found in books, an occasional series: a purchase receipt from @quaritch1847.bsky.social , dated 1899, in this 1888 angling book.

One of the pleasures of working with secondhand books is that our shelf divisions and categories are in a constant state of flux to serve our ever-changing stock. We’ve been lucky to get our hands on a comprehensive collection of social history focusing on the early modern period in Europe.

Austen Alert!! It’s incredibly rare that we have not just one, not just two, but all six of Jane Austen’s finished novels, both as individual copies and as a handsome 1940s set printed in Oxford. So head down to the shop or email us if you’re too far to browse in person.

The sunlight struck this shelf of stunning bindings so perfectly as we opened the shop this morning. Couldn’t help but capture the moment, after a dozen or so attempts.

A gathering of some intriguing and oft-asked-for titles from our recently priced secondhand. As we welcome a few more days of the rarefied Scottish summer, why not browse the shelves for a book to act as a sun shade while lying in the grass?

Robb also advises us in the contents which parts of his long poem have the best Poetical Composition. Even though to read it repeatedly from beginning to end would be no hardship, per his earlier note.

In the absence of an index, simply read the book cover to cover several times, advises William Robb, enfeebled author.

Some striking patterned wrappers and boards from books around the shop today.

A delightfully louche advert for Jay Landesman’s Polytantric Press, advertising their new Soho home, from the rear of a 1978 poetry journal. The Fingertip Massage Parlour is long gone, although the St Moritz Club seems to still be there. Polytantric’s office is now an opticians.

Don’t you hate it when you run out of fleur-de-lis ornamental type and you have to sneak in a wee thistle? Whether done on purpose or by accident, this little variation by a seventeenth century printer has delighted this bookseller today.

Behold! The National Monument as it could have been! Enjoying the illustrations in this 1906 appeal to the Scottish people to join the author’s call for funds from the government to complete the acropolis on Calton Hill.

A scrap of paper which fell out of book currently on the #cataloguersdesk advertising what I think must be Inman’s London Stores (they saved money by omitting the R), a stone’s throw away from us, here at Haddington Place, on 46 Leith Street.

A splendid sun hiding in the margin of Isaac Vossius’s 1685 collection of essays Variarum Observationum Liber, currently on the #cataloguersdesk

We’re back at the Augustine United Church for the PBFA June one-day book fair - a selection from stock on display and a bumper crop of other exhibitors as well. Here until 4pm today!

A rather fanciful view of St Bernard’s Well, followed by the artist’s justification of it on the errata leaf. Taken from John Stoddart’s Remarks in Local Scenery & Manners in Scotland, published in 1801

A little celebration of libraries in our window today! We are lucky to have the @natlibscot.bsky.social & over 30 public libraries, making Edinburgh the first UNESCO City of Literature. Check out @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social & @cilipscotland.bsky.social for more on why libraries matter.

Delighted by the Carlisle binder’s ticket in this little nineteenth century book. J. Slee has clearly done lovely work, even if the book has seen some wear over time.

That letter ‘S’ after the apostrophe on the top line is a bit of an afterthought, J. Boyle, printer of Aberdeen. He perpetrated this typographical horror in 1788 so I’ve probably left it a bit late to complain.

Found tucked inside a copy of Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces by William Creech from 1815, currently on the #cataloguersdesk

The Firsts London preview evening is in full swing and we have a stand full of lovely books!

NEW BOOKMARKS DAY!!! Five fresh designs have just landed, alongside our old faithful. Which is your favourite?