Spring is Here!

With spring just about peeking its head around the corner, the Merrickville Book Emporium is looking forward to another busy summer season in beautiful Merrickville, Ontario. While we did stay open over the winter, we used the off-season to expand and reorganize our store as well as to build up our eclectic collection of quality used literature.

We are particularly pleased to have acquired a sizeable collection of texts published by The Hakluyt Society. Since 1846, the London-based Hakluyt Society has published scholarly editions of primary records of historic voyages, travelogues, and other important geographic works.

Our collection spans from the 1940s to the 2010s (with one or two unfortunate gaps) and includes a myriad of fascinating texts from the ancient Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (an important navigational text presenting detailed information on the ancient ports of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean) to late nineteenth century journeys of discovery in Africa and much, much more in between.

Aside from presenting all sorts fascinating information (the account of early nineteenth century British exploration of the Niger River is a personal favourite!), the books themselves are beautiful with their uniform design of bright blue boards and gilt ship decoration. Moreover, the collection had been kept very well -- a number of the earlier books from the 1940s were unread as evidenced by the fact that many of the pages remained opened (that is, the leaves are uncut). Clearly, these books are waiting for the right reader to come along and open them up!