P and G Wells bookshop in Winchester

P and G Wells as it was in Victorian times.

P. and G. Wells Ltd is situated at 11 College Street, Winchester in close proximity to Winchester Cathedral and Winchester College, and next door but one from the house where Jane Austen spent the last days of her life. It is a general bookshop with a bindery attached, running as a separate business. It is thought to be the oldest bookshop and bindery still in existence in the country.

P. and G. Wells as it stands today.

timwiltshire

 

The famous alcove in the Oak Room where Jane Austen is reputed to have enjoyed sitting

 

Read from: Austen only 

We can also deduce what Jane Austen might then have read and had access to, in addition to the books we know she referenced in her novels and letters. Burdon was entitled to be called the Austen family’s bookseller, because it would appear they had an account at the shop. In her letter to Cassandra Austen, her sister, of the 25th November 1798 she makes the following comment, referring to her father’s account at Burdon’s bookshop:

We have got “Fitz Albini”; my father has bought it against my private wishes, for it does not quite satisfy my feelings that we should purchase the only one of Egerton’s works of which his family are ashamed. That these scruples, however, do not at all interfere with my reading it, you will easily believe. We have neither of us yet finished the first volume. My father is disappointed – I am not, for I expected nothing better. Never did any book carry more internal evidence of its author. Every sentiment is completely Egerton’s. There is very little story, and what there is is told in a strange, unconnected way. There are many characters introduced, apparently merely to be delineated. We have not been able to recognise any of them hitherto, except Dr. and Mrs. Hey and Mr. Oxenden, who is not very tenderly treated…We have got Boswell’s “Tour to the Hebrides” and are to have his “Life of Johnson”; and, as some money will yet remain in Burdon’s hands, it is to be laid out in the purchase of Cowper’s works. Read more on: Austen only