The Bermondsey Bookshop
The Bermondsey Bookshop was founded in 1921 by Ethel Gutman. Its inspiration was similar to that of the better-known Workers’ Educational Association founded eighteen years earlier. Ethel Gutman wanted to bring men and women of every class together through a shared passion for education and culture. In her bookshop they would learn and discuss together in a democratic spirit.
So much is factual. Around this core the author has imagined how these values and this commitment might have played out through the life of a colourfully delineated group of characters who are attracted to the bookshop. Central to them is Kate, a 14-year-old worker in a tin soldering factory who first becomes involved in the Bermondsey Bookshop through her need for a job. Her mother has died and her father gone to look for a better life outside East Lane, Bermondsey, but Kate is quite sure he will return for her when his circumstances improve. While she waits she must earn a living in the tough economic world of early 1930s London.
Can the idealism of the bookshop’s founder overcome the gulf in social habits, experience and financial resources between those who frequent it? How well can these characters, whose origins range from Bermondsey to Belgravia, understand each other’s lives? How can those who have never experienced poverty appreciate the lifelong insecurities of those who have? We follow Kate’s mixed fortunes through a diverse range of encounters in a lively story, keen to see how she resolves her dilemmas and whether she will find a stable and happy future for herself.
Engaged as we are in the personal story of Kate, we can also see that the author has taken on the question posed by the Bermondsey Bookshop. Could it fulfil its idealistic intentions?
