Welcome to Voewood Rare Books

Voewood Rare Books is a new venture born from an old one. Many of you may remember the second-hand bookshop at Fish Hill in Holt, originally owned by Simon Gough and more recently by Simon Finch under the name Voewood Art and Books. We decided to move out of the shop last year, partly because the building needed major restoration, but partly also because we recognised that lovely and fun though the old shop was, the world of rare book dealing had changed. Sadly, (and it is sad) country towns no longer support the range of antiquarian and second-hand bookshops that they did. I suppose we could have stuck to our counter-cultural instincts and tried to resist the tide of coffee shops, charity outlets and the sort of shops that sell, well, nothing much in particular. But we might then have done little more than witness the waters flooding in, before becoming, in Waugh’s beautiful phrase “submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonesse”.

Of course, this overstates for effect when all we have done is “reculer pour mieux sauter”. In fact, we have made a rather offbeat move, withdrawing into the woods at Voewood where we live, like Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, in our cabin, simply but with just enough Waldenesque self-sufficiency and low-level civil disobedience to keep ourselves and others, as Thoreau wanted, wide awake.

Unlike Thoreau, we do not aspire to solitude so do visit us although it is best to phone or email first on 01263 715539 or andrew@voewood.com. We are on the usual social media: Instagram #voewoodrarebooks, Twitter @VoewoodBooks and Facebook.

As we have said elsewhere on this site, our main areas of interest are the visual arts, literature and the counter-culture, this last being brought together under the broad description of “The Other”. In addition, we deal in antiquarian books across a range of subjects. Our tastes are broad and our boundaries porous so if you have a specific request or interest that appears not to be represented here, do contact us and we will try to help. We also sell prints, photographs and other artwork. Books and art will be added frequently to the site and updates about these sent out on social media. Lists and short catalogues will be issued on the site through our blogs. We attend various PBFA fairs throughout the year, Oxford on 22/23 April and London on 2/3 June being the next ones.

And like all booksellers, we are also buyers, keen to look at any interesting items or collections. If you have books, prints or manuscript material, please contact us and we would be happy talk to you about it or come and see you. 

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