
One of London’s foremost and best-loved bookshops, we offer a thoughtful and enticing selection of new books across the humanities, and a range of services that includes quarterly catalogues, mail order, subscriptions and private libraries.
John Sandoe opened his tiny Chelsea shop in 1957 with Félicité Gwynne, sister of the cookery writer Elizabeth David. We now occupy the two adjacent old shops too, with room for some 30,000 titles. Books are everywhere. An old customer, recollecting the shop’s earliest days, said that Sandoe’s had “all the books one could ever hope to find in one place”: the shop has grown but the ethos remains the same.
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The title sweeps together the disparate but connected groups of artists (writers, photographers, poets, composers and architects as well as painters) working in Sussex in the first half of the C20th. This remarkable illustrated study looks at Charleston and the Bloomsbury group, David Jones at Ditchling, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, Edward Burra, John Piper see more
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A collection of C19th photographic portraits of Black African, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian and mixed heritage people. This feat of curation brings together plate negatives, stereoscopic images, visiting cards, studio photographs etc from public and private archives, to take a long look at questions of race and representation. The quality of the reproductions is very high.
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An 1890s Western set in Butte., Montana, populated largely by Irish characters. It begins with a marriage but the bride almost immediately falls in love with another man, a poet who carves her first initial into his chest, robs a landlady, lighting her house on fire, stealing a horse and setting out on the run see more
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The only poetry book that Jarman produced was published in 1972, when he was thirty, but he destroyed most of the copies because he thought (unfairly) the poems were 'puerile'. A few copies remain in libraries and private collections around the world. This edition is a facsimile of the British Library's copy: an elegant volume, see more
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Abdurraqib's meditation on Black music and performance, A Little Devil in America, was inspired. This new book, a literary memoir about basketball and what it takes to be successful, what it means to 'make it', is just as poetic and political. Thrilling, both at the level of the sentence and the collective: in cities, streets, see more
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The astounding debut from Iranian-American poety Akbar, featuring pathologically polite, prescription-drug-addicted anti-hero Cyrus, whose fixation on martyrdom leads him into a tender relationship with an older, terminally ill artist. Set in 2017 but darting nimbly back and forth in time, with kaleidoscopic effects.
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THE SANDOE’S EXPERIENCE
Knights’ moves and rabbit holes: we hope our website reminds you of your visits to Sandoe’s, where the unexpected and lesser-known rub shoulders with the familiar and canonical.
THE SANDOE’S EXPERIENCE
Knights’ moves and rabbit holes: we hope our website reminds you of your visits to Sandoe’s, where the unexpected and lesser known rub shoulders with the familiar and canonical.
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This glorious book contains reproductions of 95 gouaches that belonged to an C18th Swedish vice-admiral. The images are exquisite and romantic; the accompanying text is informative and light of touch. There are sampans for transporting washing, sampans for picnics, sampans for passengers, ducks, bricks, tea, flowers...
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Cruises in North Africa, in two volumes: 'In the Sahara: by camel, by car, by cruise-ship' and 'Roaring Twenties Tourism Seen by Sandoz', an artist, 41 and well-established by the time he set out on his journey from Algeria to Marrakech, who painted, wrote and photographed what he saw along the way.
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John Sandoe's is delighted to be publishing, in association with the Cuckoo Press, our own special limited edition of this magnificent novel, consisting of 50 signed and numbered copies, quarter bound in cloth with beautiful, stencil-dyed Japanese katazome paper boards. The signature page is protected by tipped-in Japanese tissue. Each one comes in a slipcase. see more
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A beautifully produced book on an unusual subject: a single street in Hull... Alec Gill spent 15 years photographing the working-class neighbourhood as its fishing trade dwindled and housing demolition rates rose. This is an archive of a landscape and community now changed beyond recognition. Printed on gorgeous G.F. Smith paper stock with a swiss see more
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Sketches of Baldwin, in the form of personal essays, pen-and-ink drawings, charcoals, photographs, etc. From an exhibition at David Zwirner several years ago, which has only now taken shape into this gorgeously produced book. With contributions by Teju Cole, Jamaica Kincaid, Darryl Pinckney et alia.
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A very handsome, large-format limited edition book of the lost photographs of Patrick O'Higgins, best known for Madame, his memoir about Helena Rubinstein. His photographs are a fascinating record of literary and artistic lives in post-WW2 Europe: his sitters include Stephen Spender, Elsa Schiaparelli, Cecil Beaton, John Richardson, Tennessee Williams, Jean Cocteau and Somerset Maugham... see more
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Based on the Atholl collection of South African art, this superbly produced volume explores themes of transformation and metamorphosis, resistance and affinity, highlighting the fragility of our relationships with ourselves, with one another, with nature, and with worlds beyond our grasp. This fine illustrated catalogue of the 178 paintings, sculpture and works on paper currently see more
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SANDOE’S NOTIFICATIONS
John Sandoe is an integral part of my life in London. It is quite simply the best bookshop anyone could wish for.
EDNA O’BRIEN


John Sandoe is an integral part of my life in London. It is quite simply the best bookshop anyone could wish for.
EDNA O’BRIEN