Libres y libreras

Through the personal initiatives of eccentric, challenging, unique women, London has been and continues to be a place where books have a life of their own and bookshelves, a freer way of being in the world. This book deals with the history of more than thirty bookstores and their establishments in London in the last two centuries. We walk through the mythical Charing Cross Road, where the suffragettes and the nicknamed "Red Queen of Charing Cross Road", Christina Foyle, opened their bookstores. Undoubtedly, the story of Alida Klemantaski and London-based The Poetry Bookshop reminds us that the bookstores that we consider modern today already contained all their "originalities" a century ago. From the hand of the philanthropist Florence Boot (from the iconic Boots drugstore), the dazzling Nancy Mitford or the mysterious E. Millicent Sowerby, we get to know some of the most interesting stories of the 20th century to this day, with the initiatives of Ann Devers and Dee Creative. But in addition, its chapters -which can be read without the need to follow an order, although they are conceived chronologically- are also a brief history of the business of buying, selling and publishing books in the English capital from the point of view of the women who have participated in it.