A brilliant collection of 19th century possibly French crochet lace samples all stitched into a book either for reference or as a record of learning.

This little treasure is a 40 page chemist's recipe book from 1894 including such must-haves as Cow Drench, Nipple Ointment, and Cough Balls!

We can begin today with the cutest #ThingsThatFallFromBooks this is a 1970s photograph maybe of a toy or model Rolls Royce.

One of the antiques shops we visited in Lewes at the weekend had a packet of Walker's crisps in a glass cabinet, signed by Gary Lineker!

Still in its gorgeous and tactile original binding, if a little fragile, this is 'Rider's British Merlin', an almanac essentially, from 1712. I thought you might enjoy the September pages.

A story in three diary entries...

A little Sunday afternoon book buying in curious corners of Sussex. I suspect you will be seeing the inside of some of these quite soon!

This sumptuous binding is by Riviere and Son, one of the very best binders of last century and before. It is a 1929 copy of La Morte Darthur with illustrations by Russell Flint.

Damaged and delicate, but this is an incredibly rare edition of H G Wells's The War of the World's published as a pulp paperback c.1920

Today's #ThingsThatFallFromBooks

This style of stapled paperback book with paper that browned crumbled as soon as it saw sunlight were popular at the time of WWI but barely ever survive looking nice today. These covers look amazing but the books themselves are a friable mess.

Would the person who shelved the book on The Cockleshell Heroes under Natural History please take a bow!!

Booksellers 'maths'... just written this in a book description: ([20], xxvi, [4], 360) + (388, [32])

A bundle of prospectuses, catalogues, sample pages, and other ephemera from the Rampant Lions Press run by Will Carter and his son Sebastian.

Still a few seats left, let us know if you would like to come along...

If you want to start a collection of affordable but interesting antiquarian books, you could do worse than making a collection of British topographical books. Prices are currently very low, beautiful books can be had very reasonably. This is Great Britain Illustrated from 1830.

Irish interest. This slim book was published in 1938 by the Gayfield Press. This copy is gifted by Beatrice Salked, who ran the press & would go on to marry poet & IRA volunteer Brenden Behan, to a member of the Ussher family who were hugely important in the Celtic Revival SCARCE

Two interesting things about this 1772 Book of Common Prayer. 1. Its contemporary binding, roughly done at the time, the two cartouches are barely oval & one of them is upside down 2. It was still in use nearly 25 years later when the pasted addition to the title page was needed.

Dreams: A Jungian Approach A Talk by Dr Bernhard Kelley-Patterson Thurs 18th September, 7.30pm. £5 After the talk anyone who wants to stay behind can join in group discussions, led by Dr Kelley-Patterson, to which you are invited to bring a dream of your own to share. DM to book

Sometimes, no matter how efficient you are trying to be listing books online, you find you have paused to read something that catches your interest. Already today I have read some beautiful Bedouin poetry, and about the medieval myth of Melusina!

Not only is this 1897 book of Mother Goose written by the creator of The Wizard of Oz, who is revered particularly among American book collectors, it also marked the debut of a young illustrator called Maxfield Parrish.

Dreams: A Jungian Approach A Talk by Dr Bernhard Kelley-Patterson Thurs 18th September, 7.30pm. £5 After the talk anyone who wants to stay behind can join in group discussions, led by Dr Kelley-Patterson, to which you are invited to bring a dream of your own to share. DM to book

Chap walks into the Antiques Fair with a book held together with duct tape & every page torn. But only 50 copies printed. Is it worth restoring he asks? Well, you could pay £500-600+ getting it restored OR, you could have the lovely copy on the shelf right behind you for £250!

Some of our goodies at The Petersfield Antiques Fair today and over the weekend.

We are once again setting up at The Petersfield Antiques Fair, opens today at 10.30 and again tomorrow and Sunday.

Guess who spent quite a bit of today polishing his leather!?

Godfather of ghost hunting and psychopomp of psychical research... Harry Price has here inscribed a copy of his "Search for truth" to fellow author Sydney Dark.

Some rather interesting books got catalogued today. Just a small sample here...

In this Book of Common Prayer from 1695, each printed page is interleaved with a blank page for the owner to make notes. This they have done in some places in a late 18th, early 19th century hand.

Another lesser known work by a famous author, this is the scarce 1907 UK first edition of "Bohemia in London" by Arthur Ransome. No children in boats here, it's all artists' models, bookshops and salons... made special by Fred Taylor's illustrations printed on grey card pages.

A book so enticingly titled and yet misses its potential subject matter by so wide of the mark.

Goblin poetry and ghost stories are what Christina Rossetti and M. R. James are best known for, but I love finding lesser know works by well known authors like this devotional book and apocryphal translations respectively.

I may not share the religious sentiment but there is something so appealing about old prayer books. This is an 1891 book of day hours from an Anglican benedictine monastery. Interlaced between the printed pages are leaves pages handwritten plainchant.

Tfw you get to work and discover your lovely volunteer from the day before has left you homemade flapjacks in uppercase to keep you going through a Saturday at work.

Say what you like about that W. E. Sharp, but he knew his beetles

Let's start the morning with a Tolkien collectable. This is a rather fabulous Middle Earth map based on JRRT's original but illustrated by Pauline Baynes, who worked on both Tolkien and C S Lewis books. This copy is a little faded but it's nearly as old as me and I am more faded!

Don't see one of these very often: the magisterial Folio Society set of all 20 Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian

A set of The Works of Shakespeare, 12 volumes, all in full leather with marbled endpapers and page edges. Published between 1842 and 1844 and edited by Charles Knight. Close to edible!

Who wouldn't love a Patreon parcel from @pfieldbookshop.bsky.social ? Three books, wrapped up in old news stories (including the Case of the War-Rocket in 1853), and my very own tarot reading 😀 I'd love to know what a dung beetle Ace of Pentacles means: it has to be something good...

Up for a 'long read' this autumn? All of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" as published by The Folio Society. Wonderfully tactile cloth boards on the six volumes.

Our social media has been a little quiet and slow recently because my phone was stolen at the weekend. Hoping to ramp things back up again from tomorrow.

The Rock. The Gibraltar Magazine "By the Troops for the Troops" 1942/3. A broken run but scarce and what an amazing historical record in a colloquial style.

I just noticed that right now we have 6,666 books listed online. This seems inauspicious so if you would like to help by moving that number downward for us that would be appreciated abebooks.com/petersfield-bo…

I love maps of islands, somehow they always look like treasure maps. This is George Philips hand coloured, 1852 map of British islands with Channel and Scilly Islands, Wight and Man.

Two first edition Dickens books bound in beautiful red leather. The Battle of Life. A Love Story (1846) And The Haunted Man (1848)

Thus and Thus by Henri Barbusse (1929). The kind of unprepossessing book the is often overlooked in a secondhand setting but is, in fact, a brilliant collection of stories by the author of one of the standout novels of WW1 (and many WW1 stories in this collection).

Ooh, who doesn't love a good Folio Society box set? Here we have the Complete Sherlock Holmes stories alongside Raymond Chandler's novels... that would be quite the read!

The BBC Yearbooks from 1931 and 1932. How about those Art Deco jackets

Edward Strange is a great name, and in this case it's on a great book from 1896 on alphabets and lettering,

The first printing of the first UK edition of this absolute classic, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabríel García Márquez (Jonathan Cape, London: 1970)