Over Bemerton's

Over Bemerton's is a warm, comic portrait of London life seen through a second-hand bookseller's shop and the odd, affectionate world that gathers around it. When the narrator comes searching for quiet rooms near Queen Anne's Gate, Naomi and Mrs. Duckie extol the comforts above Bemerton's with irresistible logic: a bath, a good fire, a corner view, and a bookseller below for the insomniac reader. He yields, buys books for luck, and finds himself settled into a place where chance, taste, and companionship seem perfectly aligned. From there the book opens out into a vivid domestic circle. Naomi—beautiful, practical, charitable, and quietly commanding—anchors a household that includes the formidable lawyer Alderley Wynne, the lively Drusilla, and sons whose temperaments range from genial to restless. The narrator's return to London brings delight, irony, and nostalgia, while theatre nights, fashionable visitors, and the eccentricities of modern recreation add social sparkle. But the shop itself remains central: a place of interruptions, dubious sellers, comic deceptions, and poignant human need, where books are traded as much in sentiment as in money. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.