Welcome to R.A Gekoski
Who we are
Established in 1982, R. A. Gekoski Booksellers has long been one of the world’s leading specialist dealers in modern English, Irish and American literature and archives.
Though I once had a significant stock of literary first editions, as time has gone by this has thinned out, and I have concentrated my attention on literary archives. (See my recent Guarded by Dragons for a description of this process). But I’m still delighted to buy a good book or significant collection.
We are members of ABA and ILAB and often exhibit at the London International Antiquarian Book Fair.
Based in Wiltshire, we source literary material of the highest quality, rarity, and scholarly and collecting interest. We are particularly interested in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Irish literature (Yeats and Wilde); twentieth century modernism (Conrad, Pound, Joyce, Eliot, Beckett, Woolf); expatriate small press publishers in Paris (Black Sun, Obelisk Press); the Bloomsbury Group in both its literary and artistic guises; and also later twentieth century British and Irish poetry (Larkin, Hughes, Plath and Heaney). We specialise in association copies of important American and English books.
We have a long-standing interest in buying and selling literary art, a category which for us includes: pictures and other images of, and by, literary figures; pictures of and by members of the Bloomsbury Group; Eric Gill, David Jones, and their circle; Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism.
Latest Book
RICK’S NEW Book, Published July 7, 2022.
The final novel of the Darke trilogy.
Released from prison after serving his sentence for the assisted death of his wife, his health failing and his chronic impatience exacerbated, Dr James Darke self-isolates. But on his return he understands that he is now a displaced person, lost in a new world for which his education and inclinations have not prepared him.
Irascible, misanthropic, intensely bookish, fastidious in his tastes and rich enough to indulge them, Darke is a happy shut-in, busily writing oppositional pamphlets and composing a literary hoax. But his daughter and the Bulgarian housekeeper she hired to look after him have other ideas.
After Darke is a moving, witty reflection on grief, ageing and love in all its forms, and James Darke is one of the most memorable, exasperating yet loveable characters of contemporary fiction.
After Darke is available from:
Upcoming Events
June 7th 2022 – 6:15pm-7:15pm – Interview with Declan Kiely at the Center for Research in the Humanities at NY Public Library, “How does a Rare Book Dealer Think?”
June 13th 2022 – 6:00pm-8:00pm – Launch party for the US edition of Guarded by Dragons, the Grolier Club, NY: Reading, talking, signing.
July 6th 2022 – 6:45pm – UK launch party for After Darke, LRB bookshop