We Buy Books

Academic books we are always interested in hearing about...

We are always looking to buy academic books in our specialist areas. We prefer more recently out of print items by which we mean published after 1980. If you have books to sell in these key areas please contact us:

  • Literary criticism on any era but especially Victorian literature and Modernist literature
  • Literary theory including reader response, feminist, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, marxist, new historicist etc
  • Literary biography, autobiography and writers' letters and diaries etc.
  • Books about literary criticism, or the history and development of criticism
  • History of the British Isles including specifically English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish histories
  • African history and politics
  • Historiography
  • Politics, including labour movement history, and especially small press publications such as Pluto Press
  • Philosophy
  • Biblical languages including Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek
  • Theology inlcuding Chrstian theology and theologians and Jewish theology and theologians as well as Biblical exegesis
  • Dictionaries, especially those covering minority langauges or non-British English
  • Classics: Ancient Greek and Latin texts especially dual language texts, plus histories of Rome or Ancient Greece
  • Dual language fiction or poetry in any language
  • Medieval English, Norse, Icelanic or other Northern European Sagas or mythology in the original or translated
  • Anglo-Saxon literature and critiques of Old English works
  • Psychology

Authors we are always interested in hearing about...

We buy works about most authors but especially:

  • Jane Austen
  • Ann Radcliffe
  • William Godwin
  • Mary Wollstonecraft
  • John Keats
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Ouida (Maria Louise Ramé)
  • Maria Edgeworth
  • Susan Ferrier
  • Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë and Anne Brontë
  • Elizabeth Gaskell
  • Charles Dickens
  • George Eliot
  • Alfred Tennyson
  • Robert Browning
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • E. M. Forster
  • Virginia Woolf
  • T. S. Eliot
  • David Jones
  • Wilfred Owen
  • Ezra Pound
  • Ford Madox Ford
  • Elizabeth von Arnim
  • Katherine Mansfield
  • James Joyce
  • Graham Greene
  • W. H. Auden
  • Ted Hughes
  • Sylvia Plath
  • Angela Carter
  • Josephine Tey
  • Georgette Heyer

Children's books we are always interested in hearing about...

  • Any English language children's hardbacks pre 1970 - fiction or poetry
  • Children's books in translation
  • Biographies, autobiographies, letters, diaries or memoirs of children's authors
  • Literary criticism of any children's writers and their books
  • Histories of education, children's literature, or public schools
  • Matt Ladybird books invery good condition especially foreign language Ladybird books

Local history books we are always interested in hearing about...

Please contact us if you have local history books to sell for any part of the British Isles. Our main local history specialisms are Yorkshire and Lancashire but we do buy books on towns, villages and people from other part of the country. We are very keen to buy books on:

  • Towns, villages, parishes of the West, East and North Ridings of Yorkshire
  • Towns, villages, parishes of Lancashire
  • Industrial and transport history pertaining to Yorkshire or Lancashire
  • Family or geneaological histories or pedigrees
  • Biographies of influential Yorkshire or Lancashire men and women who lived before WWII
  • Books on northern English authors: the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, Leo Walmsley, Ted Hughes, John Ruskin and the Lakes poets, Andrew Marvell etc.
  • Other northern English counties especially Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumberland and Westmorland (erroneously Cumbria and Merseyside)
  • We are particularly interested in books local to us in the West Riding covering Craven, Skipton, Grassington, Settle, the Yorkshire Dales, Leeds, Bradford or Keighley.

We only occasionally buy fiction and poetry...

Other than children's fiction we buy the following types of fiction and poetry:

  • Macmillan Cranford series - or anythingillustrated by then Brock brother, Hugh Thomson and Chris Hammond
  • Art Nouveau bindings such as those by A. A. Turbayne
  • Crime fiction
  • Totally out of print or hard-to-find authors such as Mrs Linnaeus Banks, Geraldine Jewsbury, John Cowper Powys, also David Jones, Charles Williams etc.
  • Signed, first edition or limited edition novels, short stories and poetry

We do not buy...

  • Book Club excluding Folio Society
  • General or modern popular fiction
  • Military history

Please contact us if you have books in the above areas to sell, or if you are unsure as we would rather be offered too many books than too few. When contacting us please let us know where you and the books are in the country. Thank you.

By clicking "Accept All" you agree to the use of analytical cookies that we use on our website to measure usage. These cookies provide information that will help us to improve our site and enhance user experience. By clicking "Manage Preferences", you can manage your consent and find out more about the cookies we use.
Manage your privacy preferences

These are functional cookies needed to keep our website working properly and give you the best experience when visiting our website.

We collect information about how visitors use our website. The information is in aggregate form and counts visitor numbers and other information to help us improve our website.

These cookies ensure that, if applicable, any adverts are properly displayed and targeted based on your browsing. They may also be used to integrate social media on our site.

We may use assets from 3rd parties on our website, for example, Google fonts, which enhance your viewing and visual experience.

Read our privacy policy