Sotheran's Twitter

FANDOM NAME: Henry Sotheran Ltd (Sotheran's Twitter account)
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: At first glance, this appears to be the Twitter account of a long-established London antiquarian bookshop. On closer examination, it reveals a surreal, somewhat gothic alternate London in which the bookseller attempts to maintain an antiquated business while dealing with (and potentially being an) eldritch horrors. Their ongoing feud with another antiquarian bookseller appears periodically, but the feed is studded with worldbuilding gems both for the bookshop and the wider city and world around it.

It's a London where Trafalgar Square has a taste for blood:

rule actually dates back to a musunderstanding from the 1850s, when it was illegal to feed pigeons *to* Trafalgar Square in case it acquired a more sophisticated taste for blood don't even get me started on the complex legislation required to evict the subterranean clowns from under Picadilly Circus

rule actually dates back to a musunderstanding from the 1850s, when it was illegal to feed pigeons *to* Trafalgar Square in case it acquired a more sophisticated taste for blood don't even get me started on the complex legislation required to evict the subterranean clowns from under Picadilly Circus

and it's wise to pay respects to the river:

it's good manners to say hello to the thames when you pass by in case the city takes umbrage and decides to strand you one day 5 miles from a tube station in a street you've never seen before filled with closed storefronts that only seem to sell violins and candles

it's good manners to say hello to the thames when you pass by in case the city takes umbrage and decides to strand you one day 5 miles from a tube station in a street you've never seen before filled with closed storefronts that only seem to sell violins and candles

A shop where books spontaneously generate:

every day I clear some books from my desk onto the shelves, and by the end of the day my desk is full of clutter again, like the liver of prometheus regrown to torment me

every day I clear some books from my desk onto the shelves, and by the end of the day my desk is full of clutter again, like the liver of prometheus regrown to torment me

where unlit staircases provide traps for brigands:

UPDATE: we have removed the lights above the stairs but it turns out the replacement lights have not arrived so now we have no staircase lights at all but what we do have is an elegant, shadowy trap for robbers and brigands should we have checked we had all the parts before starting? perhaps, but I absolutely will not sit here and be held accountable for the consequences of my actions, do you hear me

where screaming in the building is revealed by the new phone system:

if you are trying to reach us by phone after hours, please know we have had the current phone system for 3 years now and in theory it has answerphone capabilities but no one can remember how it works it is a vast improvement on the old answerphone, which was simply broken we made the mistake of having new phones installed and I won't lie to you, it's been a disaster because it turns out the building is lined with lead or something, they aren't wired in so we've lost like 3 of the handsets, and when you pick up you sometimes hear tinny screaming

and where customer files contain very specific notes:

sometimes you open a customer file to get their address only to find only the solitary warning 'do not send bats' placed in a position of prominence, in the same way you might discover the words BEWARE THE CURSE scratched onto the walls of a forgotten tomb like I'm genuinely not sure if this is something to do with books on tiny flying mammals, or vampires, or stuffed animals, or maybe even the cricket bat debacle well I guess they won't be getting their complimentary fruit bat, will they

A bookshop with a dungeon in Tottenham Court for which they've apparently been paying rent to the wrong person. A bookshop with cellars somewhere in Birmingham. A bookshop with a ghost that turns the taps on full overnight. A bookshop with archives that go missing, and replacement archives that also vanish.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT: Sotherans Twitter

(570 comments)

Sotheran's Twitter

Post a comment in response: