18 Bookshops

Anne Scott lectures in literature and has also been a BBC Scotland broadcaster and occasional writer for The Scotsman and The Herald. She studied at Edinburgh and married there, and her son, Mike, is a successful song-writer and musician. When she was nine a bookseller folded a bookmark with a red cord into her newly-purchased book and that was the beginning of her love affair with books and bookshops. Working visits to Ann Arbor and Kansas in the 1980s, and later to New York City, Dublin and Galway, helped define her professional work as an extended study of Irish and American writing.

• FIRST ... 1.COMPENDIUM BOOKSHOP, CAMDEN: The Spread Sail 2.CHEPMAN AND MYLLAR, EDINBURGH 1507-1510: Three Years' Light: 3.THE PARROT, ST PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON 1609: These to be Solde by Wm Aspley at His Shop 4.THE OLD PRINTING PRESS BOOKSHOP, IONA: Reckoning 5.LEAKEY'S BOOKSHOP, INVERNESS: Little Gidding 6.WILLIAM TEMPLETON'S BOOKSHOP, IRVINE 1782: The Crossing Place 7.SMITH'S, 1 ANTIGUA STREET, EDINBURGH: The Lighted Stage 8.ATHOLL BROWSE BOOKSHOP, BLAIR ATHOLL: Stopping Place 9.THE GRAIL BOOKSHOP, EDINBURGH: No wealth but Life 10.BOOKS OF WONDER, NEW YORK CITY: The Colour of Hudson Street 11.THE TURL BOOKSHOP, OXFORD: If it were lost, then how? 12.THOMAS DAVIES'S BOOKSHOP, 8 RUSSELL STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1763: The Actor, his Bookshop, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell 13.WATKINS BOOKSHOP, CECIL COURT, LONDON: Through 14.KING'S BOOKSHOP, CALLANDER: The Reading Garden 15.BAUERMEISTER'S BOOKSHOP, EDINBURGH: Leaving 16.CARRAROE, CONNEMARA: Henry James at Home 17.KENNY'S BOOKSHOP, GALWAY: How to be in Ireland 18.ATLANTIS BOOKSHOP, LONDON: A Light to Shine Before