6th - 7th November

Chelsea Old Town Hall, King's Road,

London SW3 5EE

Opening Hours:
Friday 2pm to 7pm
Saturday 11am to 5pm
Free tickets can be downloaded in advance from this page, or
are £5.00 on the door.

The ABA Antiquarian Book Fair, Chelsea, is the most visually attractive and undoubtedly the friendliest event in the UK book trade calendar. Like our ‘big brother’ at Olympia it brings together on a smaller scale the cream of UK and overseas exhibitors under one roof in the exquisite venue of the 100 year old Chelsea Old Town Hall. The Old Town Hall is positioned on the lively Kings Road in the heart of fashionable Chelsea. The Hall is surrounded by excellent shops, restaurants, bars, and hotels and due to the timing of the Chelsea Fair, the area is always buzzing with early Christmas shoppers looking for something a little different this year… If you visited us in 2008, thank you for coming and please join us again in 2009!

An exhibition entitled The Pre History of the Motor Car
1600-1850 attracted much attention last year and we intend
to build on this success by staging another exhibition
entitled: "The Chelsea Arts Club Then and Now." (www.chelseaartsclub.com) ‘The exhibition will undoubtedly compliment the Fair and offer an unexpected and stimulating dimension,’ said the Chairman. The Chelsea Arts Club: Then and Now traces its colourful history to the present day, emphasizing its commitment to promoting young contemporary artists and maintaining a creative presence in Chelsea. Founded in 1891 by James McNeil Whistler, it immediately attracted not only visual artists but also novelists, publishers, booksellers, journalists and others of a literary persuasion. The exhibition encompasses
selected items from the Clubs’s own collection, including
choice works from a variety of Britain’s landmark authors
from Laurie Lee, Lawrence Durrell and the Mersey ‘beat’
poets Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, with
paintings and sculpture by artist members of the Club’s
literary members.

The Chelsea Book Fair is lively, informal and enjoyable,
offering the visitor all manner of books from scientific and
geographical discoveries, colour plate books of exotic flora
and fauna and early children’s books to maps, atlases, prints, vintage photographs, autographs and letters and of course literature, right up to modern first editions. As Chairman of the Book Fair Roger Treglown says ‘This is the fair for the collector to pick up what he or she has been searching for, and for the browser to find unusual presents for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and of course Christmas. Once again the Chelsea book fair is international, there are over 80 exhibitors taking part and the contribution of the Chelsea Arts Club will undoubtedly add a certain ‘je ne sais quoi!’

‘It doesn’t matter what your interest, you are bound to find
a book about it at Chelsea!’