London Bookshop Crawl: Daunt Books

In case you haven't seen, I'm organising a bookshop crawl in London on February 6th and I've been doing a series of features on the bookshops that we're going to be visiting. As many of them are independents it has temporarily taken the place of my Saturday Make Mine an Indie feature, and the aim is just to give a little more information about the places we'll be visiting as we'll be way too busy browsing/making each other buy all the things on the day to pay much attention to things like that I think!

Today's post is about Daunt Books. Although it's now a chain of shops and its founder is the managing director of Waterstone's we are visiting the original one in Marylebone and all of its stores are in London, so. Founded in 1990, the original Daunt Books is housed in a beautiful building that was built for antiquarian booksellers Edward Francis in 1910. They have an immense amount of books which are organised by the country that they're set in, regardless of genre which seems like an incredible way to discover new things and get out of your comfort zone! In 2010 they began publishing books (which I'll talk about in another Make Mine an Indie post!), and in 2014 they launched their own book festival which will run 10th-11th March 2016 if you're interested in going!

On their website they sell book bundles and subscriptions, during which you get a book a month for a year and they also have Daunt Books bags (cotton and canvas) and mugs, so I'm clearly going to be buying one or both while we're there! They also have a very interesting blog. 

Some interesting trivia: James Daunt's name is actually Achilles James Daunt. There's no way that he wasn't going to be a bookseller really, is there? Daunt are also opening their first branch outside of London, in Saffron Walden, Essex, under the name Hart's Books. Also, Daunt Books in Marylebone has been featured as one of Time Out's 100 Best Shops in London, which is pretty cool. 

Besides the Marylebone branch, Daunt also have shops in Chelsea, Holland Park, Belsize Park, Hampstead and Cheapside. 

Here's their London Reading list to get you in the mood!

Find Daunt Books on their website, twitter, Facebook, or with us on the 6th!

Catch up on the Make Mine an Indie series here.