Leslie Arthur’s Journey from Paralegal to Independent Bookseller
Leslie Arthur is the owner of Second Wind Books, an online antiquarian bookstore that specializes in early 20th century Modernist writers, with a specific concentration in Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, but she wasn’t always in this field. Years ago, Leslie was a civil litigation paralegal, and left to join the world of bookselling. Now, 20 years after leaving law, Leslie is joining us at the Northampton Book Fair to exhibit and sell some of the books from her finely curated collection.
In 2006, Leslie left the world of law and found a job as a cataloguer at the William Reese Company, run by William “Bill” Reese, widely considered one of the most accomplished Americana antiquarian booksellers of his generation. She worked there under the mentorship of bookseller Terry Halladay, who taught Leslie the art of cataloguing. Halladay was an expert in film memorabilia, the Harlem Renaissance and modernism, and “basically knew something about every damn thing you could think of,” according to Leslie.
While at the William Reese Company, Leslie was able to take classes from the Rare Book School, get a second undergraduate degree at the University of London and a master’s degree in British Literature at Southern Connecticut State University, where she met Vara Neverow, a professor of English and Woman’s Studies with a focus on Virginia Woolf. “One of foremost educators in Virginia Woolf happened to teach a mile and a half from my house, so that was very great,” said Leslie.
Leslie worked at William Reese until 2022, when the company changed ownership to New York based James Cummins Bookseller and London based Peter Harrington, and the literature department, where Leslie worked, was dissolved. “I realized, golly, my job's leaving me,” Leslie said. She then made the decision to open an independent online bookstore and started what has now become Second Wind Books.
Second Wind Books specializes in books, ephemera and memorabilia related to the Bloomsbury Group, a group of artists and intellectuals spearheaded by the likes of Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf, as well as E.M Forster, Vanessa Bell and John Maynard Keynes. Leslie herself is a part of the International Virginia Woolf Society, and has contributed material to the society, including letters related to Woolf’s publishing house, Hogarth Press.
But this isn’t the only thing that Second Wind Books sells. Leslie makes sure to keep Second Wind’s catalogue varied, and will focus on specific genres and fields at client’s request. For example, Leslie had to get into H.P. Lovecraft because “I had a client who had a huge collection, and so I had to educate myself on Lovecraft and Arkham House and that whole field of weird fiction.” Right now, Leslie is focusing on botanical books because she just came into contact with a large collection of them, and will be taking some of them to Northampton with her. “I had to have bookcases built for this,” laughed Leslie. “It’s a lot of work.”
Leslie is part of the growing field of independent women booksellers, and one of her emphases, as stated on her website, is “books by and about women and their adjacent admirers.” When Leslie started out in 2006, she noted that there weren’t a lot of women in the field. But “there's a lot of really brilliant young women that are coming into this whole bookselling thing,” she says. “It’s been fun to watch that develop over time.”
Leslie and Second Wind Books will be here Friday and Saturday, November 20th and 21st, selling and exhibiting their collection of American and British modernist material, as well as other material like botanical books, ephemera and memorabilia of all kinds. She can be reached at info@secondwindbks.com.
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