Welcome to
Gower Street
Europe's largest academic bookstore. Located in the heart of Bloomsbury, our Grade 1 Listed building, described by Pevsner as 'a wild block very elaborately detailed in a restless, flamboyant, Franco-Flemish Gothic style' was designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll in 1908. Originally a row of small shops with houses above, there have been an colourful mix of tenants over the years, including a harness-maker, wallpaper merchant and dealer in poultry and game.
The first bookshop on the site, Dillon's, opened in a small area of the ground floor in 1956. Now half a century later Waterstone's occupies the entire five floor building, with over five miles of shelving and 160,000 titles.
The ground floor is devoted to Fiction, Biography, Children's books, Travel and other areas of general interest, while the other floors hold specialist departments in medicine and sciences, and all areas of the arts and humanities. A unique feature is our secondhand and remainder department stocking many out-of-print and hard to find items. Additionally we offer a buy-back service for students and usually carry a large range of secondhand textbooks. We also have a Costa Coffee shop and Ryman's, the stationery specialists, on the lower ground floor.
Over the years Gower Street has played host to a large number of prestigious authors, statesmen, Booker and Nobel prize winners including Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Peter Ackroyd, and Stephen Jay Gould. We hold small informal events on the shop floor and in the coffee shop, and host larger scale events in outside venues. A recent highlight was a sell-out lecture by Professor Stephen Hawking on A Short History of Time.
Unfortunately you can't ride a steam locomotive up and down Gower Street as Richard Trevithick did in 1802, or worship at the 'Temple of the Occult' at No.99 as was the case early in the nineteenth century, but you can visit one of Europe's most striking bookshops at No. 82!
At Waterstone's Gower Street we always have offers in place, which are unique to the business and designed to make studying better value for money.
Please see in store for further details - Terms and Conditions apply.
Manager's choice of the month
Vitamin D by Emma Dexter
Emma Dexter's introductory text offers a critical account of the recent evolution and role of drawing in the art world, and introduces some of the trends, methods and artists included in the book. In the following and largest section of the book (over 300 pages and approximately 500 illustrations), the 100 or more artists are presented in an A to Z order. Some artists are presented on 2 pages, some on 4 pages. About 5 selections of work are reproduced for each artist, along a text written by an author who is a specialist on the artist's work. The 500-word texts are brief surveys of the artist's career to date, and aim at introducing the methods and subject matter at issue in their recent works. A selected list of exhibitions and bibliography also complements the reproductions and text on each artist.
RRP £39.95
£35.99
You save: £3.96
Events this month
Gower Street's LONDON themed Book Group
Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death
WATERSTONE'S GOWER STREET
Tuesday, 14 September 2010, 6:30PM
If you would like to try out our relaxed and informal Book Group we currently have some spaces. We mainly read fiction set in London and this novel is no exception. But do drop me an email if you are interested in coming along so that I have an idea of numbers on the day. Look forward to hearing from you....
Further details: 020 7636 1577
WHAT PSYCHOANALYSIS MEANS TODAY
Stephen Frosh,
Philippa Perry
Couch Fiction: A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy
WATERSTONE'S GOWER STREET
Tuesday, 21 September 2010, 6:30PM
RSVP to Gower Street Waterstone's to book your place in advance. T 020 7636 1577 e: events@gowerst.waterstones.com
In this event, the authors of two recent books discuss what psychoanalysis can mean both in therapeutic work and in its applications 'outside the clinic'. <br/>Philippa Perry, author of Couch Fiction and Stephen Frosh, author of Psychoanalysis outside the Clinic, give their views on what psychoanalysis might mean today, what it can do for people, and what it lacks.
Further details: 020 7636 1577
Opening hours
| Monday | 9.30am - 8pm |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 9.45am - 8pm |
| Wednesday | 9.30am - 8pm |
| Thursday | 9.30am - 8pm |
| Friday | 9.30am - 8pm |
| Saturday | 9.30am - 7pm |
| Sunday | 12pm - 6pm |
Contact us
Bookseller recommendation
Emma Cook, Event Coordinator at Waterstone's Gower Street, on The Lying Tongue
This is another superb book from Canongate Books. Its tale of dastardly goings on and mischievous twists and turns keeps you hooked all the way through until you reach a very satisfying ending that leaves you feeling complete! Without giving too much away, the story revolves around a young man whose aim is to write a book. He travels to Venice, where he coincidently becomes an assistant to a reclusive writer called Gordon Crace. Perfect inspiration for that book you might think, but Gordon Crace has no plans to share his literary expertise and past with Adam, who finds the intrigue of all this, just too good a story to pass up on. Is Adam willing to pay the price for his obsession with Crace, in order to gain literary notoriety?
