Tim Bryars
Antiquarian and Rare Books, Atlases, Antique Maps and Prints
Tim Bryars opened his antiquarian book and map shop at 8 Cecil Court in the Summer of 2004. He specialises in early printing, classical texts and translations, atlases and maps of all regions, mostly printed before 1800. He also has separately issued and folding maps, and topographical and natural history prints. Please note that we only deal with original material.
Cecil Court has been London’s booksellers’ row since the 1930s. Nearly every shop offers printed material in one form or another, from theatre posters to modern first editions, which makes it a unique place in London to go shopping. Cecil Court itself is a picturesque pedestrianised passage, linking Charing Cross Road with St Martin’s Lane, right in the heart of London’s theatreland, and a stone’s throw from the galleries of Trafalgar Square and the cinemas of Leicester Square. The bookshop frontages have hardly changed since the Court was rebuilt in the 1890s – booksellers being a fairly conservative lot (with a small ‘c’ of course).
Tim Bryars was formerly a director and co-owner of Paralos Ltd, located near Oxford Circus, where he worked with a similar array of antique books, maps and prints. The company was split amicably after the June bookfairs in 2004, and his colleagues now have shops in Athens and on Corfu. Tim Bryars is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, the oldest trade organisation of its kind with a strict code of ethics which we adhere to. Through the ABA we are also members of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and Tim Bryars is also a Fellow of the Rare Book Society, founded recently to promote high standards of bibliographical description and knowledge of all aspects of the booktrade through internet-based courses. Tim Bryars is also one of the organisers of the London Map Fair; one day events are held regularly at the Rembrandt Hotel in Knightsbridge and in June there is a two-day fair at the Olympia Exhibition Centre. Full details of all these organizations and fairs can be found on our links page. We also stock Map Forum, and the Map Forum website can be accessed from our links page as well.
The shop has already proved to be a great place to meet new faces and to encourage new collectors. If you can visit us in London or have access to early books and maps closer to home, there is no substitute for handling original material, especially if you are just starting out. However, we take the internet side of our business extremely seriously. We will endeavour to respond to emails as soon as possible and have tried to make the website as easy to browse and as safe to order from as possible. It isn’t always easy to discover how to begin a collection, and on our help page we have written fairly detailed introductory notes about the kind of material we have, how we have described it, who printed it and where you can read more about it. Our antique books, maps and prints are browsable by category, but there is also a quicksearch option always available at the foot of the screen, and an advanced search facility where it is possible to search by almost any criteria, for example by map-maker, printer, date or title. We do not issue printed catalogues, but we keep a current catalogue online, regularly updating it by adding and removing our antique maps and books as we find them or sell them. So that people do not have to browse through pages of antique books and maps which they have already seen we have a ‘what’s new’ page where it is possible to view recent additions, including antiquarian books or maps added since the site was last visited. The site is fully illustrated and we can send more images on request. When you have found what you are looking for it is possible to order immediately by clicking on the shopping trolley icon to the right of each item; sending payment details is fully secure.
We have an extensive stock of antiquarian books and an ever expanding number of portfolios of antique maps and prints, so we never have our entire stock online. For that reason we welcome enquiries for particular antique books or maps which fall within our specialist fields. We also buy antiquarian books, maps and prints in any quantity.
One final thing I should like to do on this page where we have been describing what we do as a company is to define what we mean by ‘classics’, a term which is used variously these days to cover anything from Homer to Dickens. We specialise in Greek and Latin classics, and use that term to cover all aspects of ancient writing. The scope is enormous, covering most of the arts and sciences that we know today. Sometimes the distinctions between disciplines were a little more blurred in the ancient world. For example, Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) saw no contradiction in writing about astronomy and astrology in the same work, and also composed the seminal classical work of geography. With that in mind we have divided the classics into categories as best we can, so that on the Tim Bryars Ltd website it is easier to find the great works of classical literature by the likes of such poets as Virgil and Catullus, historians Herodotus, Livy, Thucydides and Tacitus, and classical philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato and Lucretius. We also try to stock antiquarian editions of some of the more obscure classical authors, including ancient novels by Heliodorus and Petronius, ancient medical writers such as Dioscorides Hippocrates and Galen, other classical scientific works such as those on astronomy by Aratus, Manilius and Ptolemy, ancient travellers and geographers such as Pausanius and Strabo, and a whole ranbge of very specific texts which can best be described as technical, including works on ancient warfare by Vegetius and others, or such compilations as ‘de re rustica’, a collection of ancient texts on animal husbandry and agriculture. We also try to offer interesting but spurious works, such as the ancient forgeries of the letters of Phalaris or the supposed eye-witness accounts of the Trojan War by Dares and Dictys Cretensis. We have a section for Bibles and theology, where we list works by ancient theologians including many of the Early Fathers.
