The big Regent book sale has come and gone for another year but, as Michael Hamblyn writes, there was once a Dunedin store that catered for book hounds year round.
While Dunedin has had many second-hand bookshops over the past 167 years, only one is still spoken of in hushed tones by bibliophiles of a certain age: Newbold's Bookshop.
From its premises at 275 George St, Newbold's was the largest, most colourful and probably the untidiest bookshop that ever graced Dunedin.
Newbold's was started in 1917 by the Rev Thomas W. Newbold and his wife Ellen (nee Hopwood), after their arrival in Dunedin in 1910.
While Mr Newbold, a Methodist, fulfilled his spiritual duties, his wife ran the store, a task she performed until 1939.
The shop may have originally sold evangelical texts and Bibles, but soon morphed into a second-hand bookshop.
By the late 1920s, Mrs Newbold realised she required the services of an assistant. Fortunately, an Englishman, Mr R. D. ("Dick'') White, who was also a war veteran, sometime scholar and failed thespian, had arrived in the city aboard a tramp steamer in 1925.
After two years, he approached Mrs Newbold for work.
She hired him in 1927, for "three quid a week'', as he recalled, years later.
According to a story published in the Otago Daily Times on August 4, 1966: "A task for a Herculean bibliophile faced the new assistant. Most of the thousands of books at Newbold's were dumped indiscriminately on shelves, in boxes, in sacks and tattered parcels.''
First editions of Byron were buried amid dusty piles of old magazines.
Rare maps and woodcuts of early New Zealand were jammed among dog-eared cookery books.
Between serving and advising customers, young Mr White set about sorting the gold from the dross, classifying and indexing. It took several years.
This is how the New Zealand journalist and author Pat Lawlor described a visit to Newbold's in 1924: "Down in Dunedin recently I discovered what must surely be the most extraordinary second-hand bookshop in Australasia. For the book-hunter the place bristles with suggestions of a multitude of forgotten treasures.
"The ground floor is interesting enough, with its shelves upon shelves of tomes; but if you are fortunate enough to secure an approving nod from the owner to climb the crazy stairs to the room above, a fascinating scene of disorder meets your eye.
"Thousands upon thousands of dusty books. Books in sacks, books in cases, books in old trunks, books bursting to dusty life from tattered bundles ...
"I felt like Aladdin viewing the jewels of the magic cave and only regretted that I could not call on the genie of the lamp to sort out for me the good from the bad ...''
Mr Lawlor left Newbold's with a second edition (printed in 1774) of Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and a third edition (1734) of Jonathan Swift's poems. Both were bought for only a few shillings.
Mrs Newbold and her new assistant made a formidable team as the shop kept growing, moving to new premises in 1934 on the corner of George and Frederick Sts.
Upon Mrs Newbold's retirement in 1938, Mr White bought the store.
Mrs Newbold, who had made a name for herself in the Dunedin Repertory and Drama Society, passed away in 1965 aged 89.
Mr White, meanwhile, had joined the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association International.
The store soon became known around the world among collectors and antiquarian booksellers as a good source of early New Zealand items.
"Just dealing with the correspondence and inquiries from such people could be a full-time job here,'' Mr White said.
"Letters [came] from scores of different libraries and universities - as well as individual collectors - from Orpington, Kent, to Ohio, United States.''
Mr White's 1948 catalogue of New Zealand items in stock listed 1249 books, maps and charts.
Mr White was forced to retire in late 1966, because of the ongoing effects of a war injury received in 1918.
White recalled: "I was a young man at war with the 13th Hussars. We were moving the artillery one day, when a machinegun shot my horse from under me. The animal was rude enough to fall on my leg.
"I thought little of it then. A clearing station bandaged me up and I didn't even have to leave the battle. But now, after 48 years, it's caught up with me and on the doctor's orders, I've got to take a rest.
"A nuisance; until three months ago I didn't even know I had the trouble, but it's slowly getting worse and these doctor's orders have been the push that's made me decide to retire now.''
White passed away in January 1967 aged 67.
While other second-hand bookshops have come and gone since the glory days of Newbold's, Dunedin's reputation as a seat of learning, and as a city of literature, rests in large part upon the bookstore that Thomas and Ellen Newbold, Dick White and two generation of Dunedinites, loved.
- Michael Hamblyn is a Dunedin historian and writer.
