Our Values

The Second Shelf is a business specialising in rare and antiquarian books, modern first editions, artwork, manuscripts, and other rediscovered works by or about women and non-binary people.

Since its founding in 2017, The Second Shelf has been focused on increasing the visibility of work by women and their contributions in their respective fields and has encouraged the appreciation, collection, and preservation of this work by readers and book collectors, as well as in archives, libraries, and institutions. The rare book trade has long prioritised the work of men, and our goal has always been to prioritise the opposite, and seek out work that has been overlooked, undervalued, forgotten, and marginalised. Even the most famous of women writers do not command the same demand and value for their work in the rare book trade in comparison to their male counterparts.

In the short time since we opened for business, the conversation around gender identity has shifted in significant and positive ways, and we want to reaffirm that we have always included work by trans women and non-binary writers on our shelves, and affirm that trans women and non-binary writers have always existed, and this is reflected in our stock as we acquire and sell it. However, the way gender is articulated and expressed culturally in the past only allows us the ability to mindfully interpret or suggest context, it does not give us the ability to know how a person who was identified as a woman in the past would identify today, and therefore most of our stock is by women or people who were identified as women in their lifetime.

We also respect and celebrate the work of all people in the book trade and in collections’ fields, past and present, who have prioritised and cared about the work of women.

Our Actions

Since our founding, The Second Shelf has prioritised intersectionality and a diversity of authors in our store, in our magazine, our catalogues, our book fair tables and store displays, on social media, and at our events. This is the result of our observations, purposeful research, and a core belief that the rare book trade has, like most fields, been firmly established on a patriarchal foundation that needs disruption — and that has historically relegated women, and particularly women of colour, to the sidelines, and subjected those who do not conform or fit in to racist, queerphobic, sexist, and misogynistic treatment.

As a response to this, we invest in many books not considered as traditionally collectible in the trade, we make cases for the importance of the work and seek to place it in collections, and we have conversations and discussions with our customers and our colleagues about this work.

We create an inviting space with the aim of welcoming new customers to the idea of collecting books. We are conscientious in how we market and raise awareness about our business and mission and know that our efforts have introduced many newcomers to the idea of collecting rare books and modern first editions, and which we hope will be good for our field. And as a result, we advocate and make deliberate steps for change in our trade so that it is more welcoming to new collectors.

We are committed to anti-racism and taking daily action in our primarily white trade to positively counter its lack of diversity including our acknowledgement of our privilege and responsibility. This includes evaluating and considering carefully the material we sell and how we describe it. It includes education and training and a commitment to hiring diversely.

We accept the call Black Artists for Freedom made to cultural institutions including bookshops on June 19, 2020 to combat a racist society.

 We pay employees a living wage. We pay freelancers competitive rates in their fields. We seek out women, trans, and non-binary business owners to work with. Since our first year we have funded a scholarship to send a woman or non-binary person to a rare book seminar. We are committed to offering a Black bookseller a paid internship focused on the rare book trade within the next calendar year. Our magazine The Second Shelf: Rare Books & Words by Women has a diverse advisory board and we publish the work of a diversity of writers, artists, illustrators, and photographers.

Like all bookstores, we are open and inviting to customers, we stock work representing a range of views, including those that we don’t always agree with. Our selling a book is not an endorsement of the views in a book, but an acknowledgment that the work of women generally needs preservation, study, and discussion.

The Second Shelf is not interested in or responsible for providing a forum for debating human rights, the right to self-identify, or freedom of gender expression.

We are committed to joyful reading and bookselling, to joyful learning and thoughtful consideration of work we invest in, particularly in work we may not be familiar with or have been steered away from consciously or unconsciously, and in an effort to redress gender and racial discrimination on bookshelves.

We are a work in progress, therefore changes to this values and actions statement will reflect our ongoing conversations, our education and experiences, mistakes we've learned from, opportunities to grow, and the hopes for our future and the future of book collecting.

We are a donation point for The Black Feminist Bookshop.

We joyfully invite you to join us and many others participating in these efforts.