Abstract
Frank highlights the entrepreneurial and organic theories of book town development in this chapter with reference to the Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye as a foundational example of how book towns operate successfully as sites of both cultural and economic renewal. The chapter details the inception and development of Hay-on-Wye, uncovering the nexus between the project's success and the eccentricity of its founder, Richard Booth. Frank links Booth’s notion of a peripheral book ‘empire’ to the flow-on of both idiosyncratic and strategic global book town approaches around the world since. She clarifies trade in new titles and secondhand books as distinct from each other and links this issue to the historical disconnect between the Hay Festival, established in 1988, and Hay-on-Wye’s community of secondhand book dealers.
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Notes
- 1.
A runner buys from one dealer and sells to another. Booth describes the full-time runner as living a ‘precarious existence’ (1999, p. 21). In the United States, a runner is known as a scout. McMurtry compares the book scout or hunter who scours the bookshops and stalls of the world hunting for undervalued books with the heroes of American exploration in the early Wild West (1999, pp. 155–6).
- 2.
Booth self-published subsequent politically motivated booklets, including An Address by the King of Hay in the Black Mountains of Wales to Russell Means, Spiritual Leader of the Lakota People in the Black Hills of the Dakotas (1983a); Bureaucracy in Brecon and Radnor: With Reference to a Horse Ride through Cusop Dingle (1983b); and Why Woolworth Will Destroy Brecon (1983c).
- 3.
Stechert-Hafner was a nine-storey New York City bookstore that sold its entire stock to Booth after the company was bought for its customer list, not its inventory (Rollman n.d.). Booth then transported the books back to the United Kingdom in shipping containers. The firm had previously supplied libraries worldwide and had branches in London, Frankfurt, Paris and Bogotá, but according to Booth (1999, p. 119), ‘their expertise had waned after the Second World War’.
- 4.
- 5.
Refer to http://www.aatcomment.org.uk/the-food-of-love-how-festivals-support-local-communities, where Stuart cites the event IMPACTS economic calendar calculation. This figure has increased significantly from Florence’s estimation of a £4 million injection into the local economy in Booth (1999, p. 258).
- 6.
Refer to http://hayfestival.com
- 7.
Refer to the Hay Castle Trust website, http://haycastletrust.org/ourvision.php#ad-image-0. Trustees include Haycox (Chair), Haycox’s husband Paul Greatbatch, Peter Florence (Director of the Hay Festival), Lyndy Cooke (Managing Director of Hay Festivals), a television executive, the Director for Wales of the National Trust, a fundraising specialist and an architect with expertise in the restoration of listed buildings.
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Interviews
Booth, Richard MBE. Hay-on-Wye, Wales, 20 September 2011.
Edmondson, John. Graiguenamanagh, Republic of Ireland, 17 September 2011.
McShane, Paul. Bowral, New South Wales, Australia, 9 July 2010.
Playden, Peter. Atherstone, Warwickshire, United Kingdom, 13 September 2011.
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Frank, J. (2018). Hay-on-Wye: ‘A Town of Travellers Who Stopped’. In: Regenerating Regional Culture. Sociology of the Arts . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65036-4_2
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