SPIEGEL: Ms. Devers, your store slogan, is "rare books by women" - is not that exaggerated? There are many books by authors.
Devers: Yes, there are millions. The books in my antique shop are rare, however, because women's books have never been considered collectible, never as important as a man's book.
SPIEGEL: How do you specifically define this imbalance?
Devers: How unequal is evaluated, I noticed a few years ago at a secondhand book fair. I pulled a book from Cormac McCarthy off the shelf: It cost $ 600. The book next to it by Joan Didion, which I consider equally relevant, cost $ 25. That could have many reasons, but when I looked around that day, I almost only saw men in the room buying and selling. And I thought: Oh, that's how the value of women and their work is measured! And that does not happen fair. In a second hand bookshop, for example, it is important for the price, if the author has won prizes. But you just have to look at how few women have won a Nobel Prize to understand: women's literature is unfortunately still treated like a niche.
more on the subject
SPIEGEL: About one shelf of "women's literature" in bookstores?
Devers: Exactly. This is not about gardening - we are half of humanity. Even the first novel, although there are different views, should come from the Japanese Murasaki Shikibu. Some of the books in my shop are otherwise untraceable and do not exist in any library. So there are many reasons why women's books should be worth more - because this price reflects the value of what women have done in the world. And that's not true in our history books yet. Thankfully, today there are more and more institutions and libraries that have decided in view of their stocks to tackle the imbalance and now specifically buy works by women. That's inspiring.
SPIEGEL: What can your 28-square-meter bookstore in Soho, which you opened a year ago, change?
Devers: I do not think I can do it alone. For example, there's this paperback book I bought at a charity shop: a first issue in 1974, by Miriam Tlali, I'd never heard of her. It turned out: This is the first novel by a black woman in South Africa, a smart, highly critical, realistic book that was banned by censorship and did not re-appear until 1985. I bought all the specimens that I could find. And sold all again, the best thing about Harvard. So I do not just sell a book. I get people to talk about the books and the authors, to write. And to relocate them - at Tlali it could work. The whole line of my offer is therefore: rare books, modern first editions and rediscovered works of women.
SPIEGEL: Sounds more like a political-literary lobbyist than a bookseller.
Devers: The questions that Virginia Woolf poses in "A Room Alone" still apply: where do we fit into the industry - and why do not we fit better? This is nothing new, feminism does not exist since it is divided into waves. Even the Frenchwoman Jacquette Guillaume wrote in a book of 1655, which I have in the store, about the inequality between men and women.
SPIEGEL: So does Meg Wolitzer, who writes in her essay "Second Shelf" from 2012 about Party-Smalltalk: "Did I have to hear from you?" She asks a man, and she would like to answer: "In a fairer world already . " Is your store named after this dialog?
More at SPIEGEL +
Devers: When I was looking for a name for my store, I remembered her essay on the subject and read it again - I noticed the title of the play. And because I had already met Meg Wolitzer at two cocktail parties, I wrote to her with my request. She encouraged me and said, clearly, only to. The name is a play on secondary importance: on the fact that women's books are further down the shelf. And a reference to "The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir. We do not deserve to be down - in bookshelves and in society. Instead we should celebrate being ourselves.
SPIEGEL: How did you come up with this task of promoting books by women?
Devers: I wanted to make something meaningful with my life - especially in a time when much is not so great: with a president like Trump, who is not good with women, a trumpet figure as UK Prime Minister, the environment that breaks down goes. The store is the opportunity to combine my themes: book history and feminism.
SPIEGEL: What does a book cost you?
Devers: It's a fine line: My shop rent will be raised next month, and I have not paid a salary yet. But at the same time, I want people to feel that they are contributing, maybe starting to collect, even without much money. That's why I introduced the section "Modern First Editions". There are collectibles that cost only eight pounds. But if something special, it also deserves special appreciation, both ideal and financial.