231027 Collection Digital Cover 1 - Flipbook - Page 85
HATCHARDS
“The bookshop’s pinnacle was fitting out the
library at Sandringham, the country retreat
of the Royal Family, in the 1890s – there is
even a telegram from Buckingham Palace
asking for an up-to-date French dictionary
to be delivered soonest.”
By around 1795, John Hatchard had saved £5, bought a barrow, and
started selling books in Piccadilly. It went so well that in 1797, he moved
indoors to number 193, and a few years later to no 187, the shop’s present
location. A prominent publisher and anti-slavery campaigner, Mr.
Hatchard based clientele and stock around the abolitionist movement,
and the evangelical wing of the Church of England. Soon Hatchards
became a meeting place for the like-minded, and regular customers
included politician and philanthropist William Wilberforce and
botanist Sir Joseph Banks.
In 1845, Mr. Hatchard retired, and his son Thomas took over the shop,
which had established an extensive business with the Royal Family
(the first sale was to Queen Caroline in 1810, though when Hatchards
received its first Warrant remains a mystery; the earliest documentation
is from 1840). The pinnacle was fitting out the library at Sandringham,
the country retreat of the Royal Family, in the 1890s – there is even
a telegram from Buckingham Palace asking for an up-to-date French
dictionary to be delivered soonest. Clientele extended to the ruling
classes, and stock to the great literature of the nineteenth century,
plus classics of Greek and Roman antiquity. Throughout this period,
Hatchards was managed by famous bookman Arthur Humphreys,
a close friend of Oscar Wilde (the playwright would check his proofs
at the table on the ground floor).
The fresh century saw many surprises: Hatchards became a hub for
new ‘modernist’ literature (to this day, fans of Virginia Woolf look inside
the shop’s windows to emulate Mrs. Dalloway’s stroll through London);
at different times, writers Evelyn Waugh, Ian Fleming and Somerset
Maugham all lived in Albany, a set of gorgeous Georgian buildings
opposite, and were frequent visitors. During the Second World War,
a large bomb exploded just 50 yards away, and, after Great Britain’s
victory, Hatchards fought closure until Billy Collins, proprietor of
the eponymous publishers, bought the shop, and its managers brought
it back to life.
Most exciting presently is Hatchards’ rare book department, which
includes a signed first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Confidential Clerk
from 1954, and a complete set of Churchill, bound in vellum, in its
own bookcase.
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