Bowes & Bowes

Bowes & Bowes was a bookselling and publishing company based in Cambridge, England. It was established by Robert Bowes (1835–1919), a nephew of Daniel Macmillan (1813–1857 — the founder, with his brother Alexander, in 1843, of Macmillan & Co., another successful bookshop in Cambridge). The company became known as ‘Bowes & Bowes’ only in 1907, following George Brimley Bowes’s (Robert Bowes’s son’s) becoming a partner in the firm in 1899. The firm continued as a family business until 1953 when it was acquired by W H Smith, who continued to operate it under the original name until 1986. In that year the business’s name was changed to Sherratt & Hughes.

1 Trinity Street, site of Bowes & Bowes, now Cambridge University Press

The Bowes & Bowes site at 1, Trinity Street, Cambridge has a claim to be the oldest bookshop in the country, books having been sold there since 1581.[1] Since the closure of Sherratt & Hughes in 1992, the site has been the home of the Cambridge University Press bookshop.

The firm’s backlist included titles by Erich Heller, who was also the general editor of a series of books published by Bowes & Bowes (Studies in Modern European Literature and Thought, some of which were printed in the Netherlands). By far their most prestigious author was Edwin Keppel Bennett.