London's oldest esoteric bookshop is found at 21 Cecil Court, trading from a premises it has occupied since 1901. We are told that John M. Watkins had been trading in books since 1893, when he had started selling books by catalogue in an attempt to embrace a late-Victorian tendency to question prevailing wisdom about the mind, body and spirit. Today, Watkins bills itself as one of the world's oldest and leading independent bookshops specialising in esoterica.
The shop passed to John's son Geoffrey following the founder's death in 1947, and though it was eventually sold to new owners, Geoffrey stayed on for many years before his death in the 1980s. It was then acquired by Donald Weiser in 1984, before being sold again in 1999 and saved from administration in 2010 by writer and entrepreneur
Etan Ilfeld, who still owns it today.
For more, see
http://www.watkinsbooks.com/
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