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Daunt Books has taken over ownership of the Lutyens & Rubinstein Bookshop under the name L&R Bookshop, Sarah Lutyens and Felicity Rubinstein have announced.
Founded in 2009 in London, the Lutyens & Rubinstein literary agency took up residency in the basement of the bookshop behind its famous sliding bookshelves.
Lutyens and Rubinstein said: “We talked for years about opening a bookshop and finally took the plunge at a time when the kind of books we loved reading and representing were getting lost; supermarkets were selling bestsellers at hugely discounted prices and traditional bookshops were focused on ‘three for two’s. We wanted our shop to be beautiful and distinctive, but the initial stock selection was just as important.
“It was put together by asking all our friends and publishing contacts to name the 10 books no good bookshop should be without. The shop was profitable from the start with a fantastic team of booksellers headed by Claire Harris and thrived despite the threats posed by the Kindle, Amazon and the pandemic. It has been a pleasure to champion some amazing books over the years, and host events for some of the most exciting writers published during that time – from Ben Macintyre to Nina Stibbe and Elizabeth Strout, Karl-Ove Knausgaard and Philippe Sands to Dolly Alderton and Jennifer Egan, as well as the agency’s own stellar raft of authors.”
They added that in the last 14 years, the agency has tripled in size and. They said: "we now need to focus our time and energy in that direction. We are absolutely delighted that the shop has grown such solid roots in the neighbourhood and that Daunt, with whom we share so much of our DNA, have agreed to take it under their wing while keeping the individual identity of the shop,” they said.
A spokesperson for Daunt Books said of the acquisition: “We’re delighted to welcome one of the country’s finest independents into the Daunt Books fold and look forward to working with Claire and her team to preserve the shop’s distinctive appeal and ensure its continued prominence in London’s literary landscape.”
Tara Spinks, who joined as a bookseller on the bookshop’s opening weekend and has split her working life between the shop and the agency since 2017, will move full time to the agency where she is head of finance.