Archers Bookshop

David Archer, a communist, owned Archers Bookshop. The bookshop had branches in Parton Street and Soho.

The Parton Street shop was renowned for its extensive poetry stock and served as a meeting point for young poets and other literary figures such as Randall Swingler, Ralph Fox, Jack Lindsay, and John Cornford.

Archer was born on April 15, 1907 and attended Cambridge from 1925 to 1928, where he co-founded the Marshall Society alongside Pat Sloan, Maurice Dobb, and Philip Sargant Florence.

In 1932, he lived in Cambridge House in Camberwell, a centre for Cambridge men interested in social work and learning about the conditions of life in South London. During this time, Archer joined the Prometheans and invested the capital to launch Archers Bookshop.

The bookshop became a social and political hub, serving as the headquarters of the Scottsboro Defense Committee and publishing Romilly’s progressive Public School journal, "Out of Bounds." Archer also took it upon himself to publish crucial early works by poets like Thomas, Barker, and Gascoyne.

Archers Bookshop eventually closed in 1939. However, Central Books opened next door in that year and continued trading into the late 1950s. The area of Parton Street, heavily bombed during the Blitz, was later redeveloped by postwar planners.

Sources:
Radical Bookshops Listing, Radical Bookshop History Project (November 2023) [Available online here, accessed 13.05.2025]
Modernist Review
Layers of London - David Archer's Bookshop