Kristen Frazier and her sons Nathan, left, Alex, front center, and Tim, back center, look through books by Roald Dahl and other authors while shopping at Bell’s Books in Palo Alto on November 25, 2014. Photo by Veronica Weber
Long before Bell’s Books became a beloved fixture of downtown Palo Alto, it was a scrappy textbook operation run by an Alabama native with entrepreneurial ambitions and a flair for French theater and literary soirees.
The store is a brainchild of Hebert Bell, who had spent his youthful years hosting literary salons in his hometown Brewton, Alabama, before venturing to Paris to take a stab at journalism and get immersed in the theater scene. When that didn’t pan out, he began working with a Los Angeles book dealer who had ambitious of expanding business north. In 1935, Herbert Bell packed a station wagon full of books and arrived to Palo Alto with the intent of supplying Stanford University students with textbooks, according to Faith Bell, his daughter and current owner of the Emerson Street bookstore.
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Initially known as The College Book Company, Bell’s Books is now in its 90th year and going strong. No longer geared exclusively toward college students, the shop at 536 Emerson St. is now filled with literary treasures for run-of-the-mill bookworms and hardcore collectors alike. These include first editions of “The Hobbit” and other rare works from the J.R. Tolkien cannon; 30 signed first editions of John Steinbeck books signed by John Steinbeck; and a copy of Lewis Carrol’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” signed by Alice Liddell, a girl whom Carroll had befriended and who is seen by some as a model for the protagonist.
“We just sold a book signed by Nikola Tesla,” Faith Bell said in a recent interview.
The shop has changed in many ways since the early days, when Herbert Bell peddled books to students cycling past the store’s initial location near University Circle. It has moved four times, Bell said, and it has witnessed changes in consumer habits. When she arrived at the family store in the 1980s, people were browsing books on VW repairs and plumbing. As Silicon Valley developed into a tech Mecca, more customers began to seek out books relating to computers and programming.
Some things, however, have remained the same. Grandmothers continue to stop by Bell’s Books to buy books for their little ones, just as they had in the earlier days. And while the store has specialized in collectibles and antiquarian books for many years, its interest in these rare works has only gotten stronger over the years.
“We have some pretty astonishing collectives that have come in, and we have developed a really knowledgeable clientele in that realm,” Bell said.
On Saturday afternoon, Bell’s Books will celebrate its 90 years in business with a special event featuring local authors; letterpresses where visitors will be able to print their own bookmarks; and a curated display featuring 90 of the store’s finest books. The list includes the first edition of Tolkien’s first book, a signed first edition of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and a signed edition of “The Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B. du Bois.
Contemporary authors with local connections will also be on hand to sign books. The list of authors includes C. Townsend Brady, author of “Mastering Classic Cocktails,” Alison Carpenter Davis, author of “Letters Home from Stanford,” Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, author of “Boxes from the Attic: An Immigrant’s Story,” and Rajesh Oza, author of “Double-Play on the Red Line.”
The event will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. on Oct. 18 at 536 Emerson St. The store will be open during these times, offering visitors a chance to peruse the roughly 350,000 books in its inventory.
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