Foyles bookstamp (1930s)

 

Foyles (W & G Foyle, Ltd.) was founded in 1903, moving to the above address in 1929. The air of menace and hostility conveyed in the bookstamp was probably quite intentional: under the late Christina Foyle (and her predecessors),  the shop's atmosphere and practice were as follows:

Foyle's long refused to take orders by phone and until this decade banned cash registers and calculators, insisting that all reckoning be done by hand. Though famed for her determination and a gaze that could flash with impatience, Miss Foyle spoke in a high-pitched voice that one listener likened to the sound of someone who had just inhaled helium.

Finding the book you wanted from the ramshackle stacks in the dimly lit and chaotic shop was known to be such a trial that a competitor created bus stop posters saying, ''Foyled Again? Try Dillon's.'' Volumes were shelved by the names of their publishers rather than by their authors, and guidance was hard to get from the poorly paid staff, who often were newly arrived in London and had limited knowledge of English. A customer who once asked for ''Ulysses'' was told he had gone to lunch.

For decades Miss Foyle maintained a system of purchase that required obtaining a receipt and getting in line three times before finally reaching the desk where the book waited. In a much repeated comment, one survivor said, ''Imagine Kafka had gone into the book trade.''

[source: "Christina Foyle, 88, Queen of the London Bookstore, Dies", The New York Times, 11 June 1999. pub. at http://bit.ly/cpKAxz ]

Today, Foyle's still operates on five floors at 119 Charing Cross Road, and outclasses its competitors - even if Kafka's still in charge of the layout.