CHRISTIAN AID CHARITY BOOK SALE OPENING IN EDINBURGH
EDINBURGH - Edinburgh’s Christian Aid book sale, one of the world’s largest annual charity bazaar of print, art, music and memorabilia, opens on Saturday with a 1776 tour guide of Scotland and postcards of the early stars of Peter Pan high on the list.
The sale, which started with a pile of books on a trestle table in 1974, now offers around 100,000 literary works annually and has raised 1.8 million pounds for the charity over the years at the historic church of St Andrew’s and St George’s in the city centre.
It is closed on Sunday, but then runs through from Monday to Friday next week.
English traveller Thomas Penant wrote his Tour of Scotland in 1776 after his travels around the country. The houses on the Edinburgh skyline, he said, had “a look of magnificence not to be found in any other part of Great Britain”.
Ried Zulager, a 46-year-old American internet executive who flies from Washington every year to help at the book sale, noted this year marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Scottish creator of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie.
It also marks the 450th anniversary of the Reformation which changed the religious, social and political face of Scotland, with a number of histories and other works on offer..
Zulager said the memorabilia section had a whole collection of postcards of early performers of Peter Pan from around 1906, four years after Barrie’s play of the mischievous boy who never grew old appeared on the London stage.
There is also a rare 21-volume 1836 edition of the prose works -- primarily essays -- by the poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott, with illustrations by the English painter J.M.W. Turner and the Scottish artist David Hill. ( contributed by Iain Hamilton)
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