A wide range of out-of-print and rare books costing from a few pounds to tens of thousands will be on sale this weekend at Oxford Brookes University.
Eighty booksellers will set up shop at the annual Oxford Book Fair from 12pm to 6pm on Saturday, and 10am to 5pm on Sunday at the Gipsy Lane campus, in Headington. The most expensive book on sale is a first edition copy of Iain Flemming’s Casino Royale, which could cost one James Bond enthusiast as much as £28,000.
The smallest book in the world, a polyglot Lords Prayor, which comes with its own magnifying glass, is also up for grabs at £48. Organiser Peter Hill said: “A whole range of books are on sale, you can walk around and find something for a small amount of money or something collectible if your pockets are a bit deeper.”
Although many of the customers are from libraries and Oxford colleges, Mr Hill said the fair had something for everyone, including people with no experience of book collecting.
“Younger people often know what book they are looking for and then buy it online on eBay or Amazon but the best thing about a book fair is that you often come away with a book that you didn’t set out to buy and didn’t know existed,” he said.
“There is an element of chance, you can find an interesting book by looking around and just walking around. It costs £2 to come and you can handle al the books, the sellers can tell you about them, it may even start some people off on the road to being a collector.”
