Fuchsia Voremberg

 

I have always been attracted to the idea that something in my hands had a life before me. I grew up in Salisbury, home to the best surviving example of Magna Carta, so history never felt far away. It’s a remarkable document, not only does it demonstrate the longevity and stability of rare books and manuscripts, but it shows the potency of what they contain: Magna Carta limited the power of the monarchy in the thirteenth century, and continues to inspire freedom movements around the world.

Living in the English countryside, I developed a fascination with different cultures and people whose lives were so different from mine. At school I had a wonderful English teacher who encouraged my interest in American literature. I remember voraciously reading my way through the Beats, and discovering a taste for American culture. It was partly the excitement of the unknown, but I also enjoyed the contemporary nature of it.

In due course I went to the University of East Anglia to read American Studies. The degree included a year abroad, which I spent at San Francisco State University, coinciding with the California budget crisis of 2009-2010. As a result, the renovation of the university library was halted, and the books moved to an off-campus annexe which I never managed to find. I decided to give myself the challenge of buying my course books in the secondhand shops of San Francisco. It became an odyssey of book-scouting, but I wasn’t yet plugged into the idea of the value of books other than their value to me.

Bolerium Books on Mission Street is one of the most interesting bookshops in America. They specialise in social movements, and have deep roots in the activist communities of the West Coast. Alex Aiken, who is a co-owner of the business, started part-time while finishing a PhD in Chinese history at Harvard University. I always manage to find something for the shop and something for myself when I visit.

I arrived in San Francisco with my copy of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, and returned to England with boxes and boxes of books. After my graduation from the University of East Anglia, I worked in a pub and music venue in Stockwell in London, and helped to run a monthly literary cabaret called the Brautigan Book Club. We met at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, and hosted poets and musicians who were inspired by the writings of Richard Brautigan, the American novelist and poet. I managed to organise a reprint of Please Plant This Book, a collection of eight of his poems, each printed on a packet of seeds. Brautigan had self-published it in 1968 in an edition of 6,000 copies, distributed for free, and with a statement stipulating that permission was granted to reprint the book by anyone as long as it wasn’t sold. The mechanics of the edition came together by chance. I was chatting to someone over the bar in Stockwell and it turned out that not only was Brautigan his favourite author, but he happened to be a printer. He offered to print the pages for free, and the seed packets of the reprint of Please Plant This Book were assembled in my living room. It was the kind of capricious favour that changes the direction of someone’s life.

I owe my introduction to Maggs in 2012 to my friend Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor, an independent publisher specialising in what they call unpopular culture – everything from UFOs to experimental music. Mark had curated an exhibition in the old stables behind Maggs, and one day he gave me Ed Maggs’s email address, and suggested I send in my CV. The moment I walked through the front door of 50 Berkeley Square, I knew – with the confidence of youth – that it was a place where I could be happy and useful.

I spent my first two years at the front desk, which was a wonderful experience as you meet everyone. When John Saumarez Smith retired from G.Heywood Hill, around the corner in Curzon Street, Maggs offered him a desk in Berkeley Square, and I sat next to him for a few years. I learned so much about the book trade from John, especially the degree to which customer service is at the heart of what we do. It was an education to hear the manner in which he spoke to collectors. When you recommend a book to someone, it’s a way of saying that you have been thinking about them. If you get it right, it’s satisfying on both sides.

In 2014, there was a vacancy in the Travel department at Maggs, and I was invited upstairs to fill that seat. Hugh Bett was running the show at that point, and I got to see a master at work. From the beginning, Mark Tewfik, who is the current head of the department, took me under his wing. He’s been a huge influence on my career, and I’m very grateful to him as my mentor and friend. Mark taught me that any good book is a travel book, and I’ve found it a helpful way to think about the subject.  Travel means different things to different people; it’s such a porous term, but I appreciate its vagueness. It has enough breadth to give us the scope to keep changing the kinds of books that we offer our customers.

When you think about travel books, it’s crucial that the indigenous voice is heard and given space. I’m interested in how history is made and who gets to tell it. There’s been a great pivot in the trade towards ephemera. When you’re working with private or institutional collectors, who already have established libraries, you need to find ephemeral material that contributes something different to the subject. I have a great enthusiasm for Arctic imprints. It’s fascinating to think that the Franklin search expedition ships took a printing press in order to share their coordinates and routes with any potential survivors. The information was  distributed over the ice by various methods including unmanned hot air balloons. There was even a suggestion that the printed matter could be tied to the collars of Arctic foxes.

The presses were also used to print shipboard newspapers and other material for the entertainment of the crew during the long, dark winters. It’s such a thrill to think of the constraints of the environment in which these items were printed.  I’m always excited to find books that belonged to a ship’s library. We had a Spanish language Bible owned by John Lort Stokes, the Royal Navy officer who shared a cabin with Charles Darwin onboard HMS Beagle. I like to think of them practising their Spanish, Duolingo-style, as they sailed towards South America.

Polar exploration is one of the areas of travel literature that is most in demand; they’re such great stories. I find Antarctic exploration particularly fascinating because it’s the only continent without an indigenous population. You’re encountering the landscape and the climate but, ultimately, you’re encountering yourself, and the theme of man against the elements has an enduring appeal. Ernest Shackleton’s story seems to resonate most with our customers. When his ship, the Endurance, was trapped and destroyed in the Antarctic ice, his exceptional leadership skills turned a voyage of discovery into a powerful story of survival, in which he prioritised the safety of his men. In fact the heroic age of polar exploration may be said to end with the death of Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1922.

Although a woman didn’t set foot on the Antarctic continent until 1935, there’s plenty of evidence of women’s involvement in polar exploration before that. Sir Clements Markham’s sledging flags are my favourite example. Markham was the President of the Royal Geographical Society when he suggested that sledge captains should have special flags, embroidered often by female relatives and other women to inspire them as they hauled incredible weights across the frozen sastrugi of Antarctica. The miniature flags were mostly decorated with actual or invented heraldic devices, and I regard them as a potent symbol of women’s creativity at the heart of Antarctic exploration.

There’s a wonderful short story by Ursula Le Guin called Sur, which was first published in The New Yorker in 1982. It’s set two years before Scott and Amundsen’s race for the South Pole, and tells the story of nine South American women who tell their families that they’re retreating to a convent for six months. In fact they hire a boat in Chile, sail to Antarctica and reach the South Pole in 1909. They return home without leaving any trace of their journey or achievement. The story raises interesting questions about the purpose of exploration, and that the idea of conquest isn’t necessarily the most important.

Women reach the South Pole and don’t stick a flag in the ground. I know it’s fiction, but it reminds me of all the instances in which women’s work goes unmarked, for example by publishing anonymously or by having their husband’s name put on the title-page. Caroline Schimmel, the great collector of women in the American wilderness, often quotes Virginia Woolf’s principle that ‘Anonymous is a woman’. She takes such a broad and inspiring approach to her definition of women on the frontier. Lisa Unger Baskin has achieved the same in her incredible collection on the subject of women and work.

Even when I began to work in the rare book trade, women were strikingly under-represented. The situation has changed enormously over the last thirty years, and the trade has become a more hospitable place for someone like me. I’ve certainly been the beneficiary of great support and kindness from so many female colleagues, who have made my career possible. The list is long, but I owe a great debt to Sophie Schneideman, Jenny Allsworth, Deborah Coltham and Polly Beauwin, who was the Autographs specialist at Maggs when I started.

Diversity enriches us all, and I’m passionate about promoting it within the antiquarian book trade. In 2022 I was invited to join the Maggs Bros board of directors, and since then have had the opportunity to work with Ed and Ben Maggs on establishing the firm’s scholarship for the History of the Book. It’s a Masters programme at the nearby Institute of English Studies, and the award covers the scholar’s fees in full, and includes the opportunity of an internship at Maggs. It’s designed to give someone from a background under-represented in the trade the opportunity to have a comprehensive education that could support a career in our industry.

Late last year, I took over from Ed as the Managing Director of the firm. I feel privileged to work for a company that’s mostly owned by an Employee Trust. Maggs had been entirely family-owned until the 1990s when Ed and his father and cousin established the Trust, giving the employees an indirect stake in the company. There’s no secret to the fact that the firm is a collaborative effort, and that its success is due to the expertise of the staff. We deal in such a variety of material, and each department has the freedom to pursue their own interests and to serve customers as they see fit. I find it so exciting to watch the new directions in which our younger specialists take the stock, while ensuring that we honour the values that have been instilled in this business during its long history.  

It’s a huge luxury to have two bricks and mortar premises in central London, and we need to ensure that we’re making the most of our shops in Bedford Square and Curzon Street. You don’t need to be a collector to enjoy the experience of visiting a bookshop. My colleagues are  enthusiastic about their books, and are delighted to show them to anyone who is interested. After the advent of online bookselling, there was an awful period when a lot of independent bookshops closed. It was not the end of the business model, but bookshops opening today have had to diversify. There is increasingly an aspect of serving the community by hosting reading groups or exhibitions or other events that bring like-minded people together. I want our bookshops to feel like destinations, where everyone is welcome whether they buy something or not.

My generation saw the arrival of the internet and social media. Though we were not born digital, I think we understood its limitations. Young people who grew up in the online world have a completely different relationship to material objects. I would describe it as a huge shift in ownership. If you have a digital music library, for example, you often don’t actually own it  - you’re simply leasing it for your lifetime. I believe that the young are increasingly discovering the value of owning physical media; it’s a way of externalising things. The books on your shelf are a reflection of your inner life. They give you the opportunity to own a piece of history that means something to you. I’ve dedicated my life to an optimism in the future of our trade; there’s something reassuring about the physical object in a digital world.

Interviewed in August 2025