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ABOUT THE SHOP No. 02

A small shop with
a long memory

We opened The Margin in a former print works because a room that once made books felt like the right place to keep them alive.

fig. 1 — the front room fig. 1 — the front room
fig. 2 — stacked & shelved fig. 2 — stacked & shelved
fig. 3 — the reading room fig. 3 — the reading room
01

our story

The Margin began as a single trestle table of secondhand paperbacks at a Sunday market. People kept coming back — not just for the books, but for the notes we tucked inside them: a line about why this one mattered, a warning that chapter four would wreck you.

Today we’re a proper shop with a reading room, a poetry wall, and a standing invitation: pull anything down, find the margin note, and decide for yourself. We’d rather sell you one book you love than ten you’ll never finish.

How we shelve

02

Read before recommended

Nothing reaches the front table until a bookseller has read it and written the shelf-talker by hand.

03

Used & rare, fairly priced

Second-hand books are meant to be read again — not locked in a cabinet. We price for readers.

04

A room to stay in

The reading room is free, always. Bring your own book if you like; the coffee is on us after noon.

the booksellers

The people who write the notes

RS

Rae Sundqvist

Fiction & founder

Will not stop talking about translated literature. Ask about the staff shelf.

SO

Sam Okeke

Poetry corner

Runs Poetry at Dusk. Believes every poem is shorter than your commute.

TM

Theo Marsh

Used & rare

Has a sixth sense for first editions and a weakness for marginalia.

Stop by and say hello

14 Hawkstone Lane, by the old print works. Open Tuesday to Sunday.

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