An 136-year-old Lake District bookshop is celebrating coming under new ownership.
Sam Read Bookseller, in Grasmere, will pass into the hands of new owners Will Smith and Polly Atkin, who will be the seventh generation to take on the shop.
The duo are taking over the store following the retirement of Elaine Nelson, who succeeded Margaret and Dan Hughes who retired in the year 2000.
Established in 1887, November also marks 128 years of continual business from the store’s current premises in Broadgate House.
The bookshop, which is named after its founder, has a long history in the area and under Elaine’s stewardship, the shop won the 2006 Times/Independent Alliance Competition for Best UK Independent Bookshop, and made the regional shortlist for Independent Bookshop of the Year four years running from 2020.
Will has worked at Sam Read’s since 2012 and has a PhD in Canadian literature. He has also been a judge for the Costa Book Awards and the Nature Chronicles Essay Prize.
In 2020, he set up an online shop to reach the bookshop’s customers during the COVID-19 lockdown, which is still used now.
In September this year he was one of ten UK booksellers named in a shop floor honour roll by the Booksellers Association.
Originally from Suffolk, like Sam Read himself, Will strives to continue the precedent Sam set, who was said to have both ‘kept himself abreast of modern literature, and made a speciality of Lake country books’.
Will said: “With a shop with such a long legacy as Sam Read’s, there’s a responsibility to uphold, both in the service we offer our customers and the breadth and depth of books on our shelves.
“Some of our customers remember Helen Read, Sam’s daughter, who followed on from her father to run the bookshop until 1950. It’s a unique shop which has added to the vibrancy of the village over generations and we see how much it means to our customers every day.”
Writer Polly moved to Grasmere in 2007 and soon became a fixture in Cumbria’s literary landscape.
Attendees of Sam Read’s book events and members of Grasmere Book Group will know Polly and Will as overflowing with bookish enthusiasm, which they hope to bring to the shop, and to readers new and familiar.
Polly added: “Our aim is to be good custodians of the shop and its history, keeping it alive and active for all readers, and taking it forward in the spirit it began.”
