City Centre

5 independent bookshops worth the trip in City Centre.

City Centre · mixed

Gulp Fiction

A converted flower stall in Oxford's historic Covered Market, founded by a former Blackwell's book buyer. New and secondhand fiction shares the space with barista coffee, evening pints, author talks and a cosy upstairs reading nook.

City Centre · secondhand

Barker & Co Booksellers

A secondhand and antiquarian shop set in a 1496 coaching-inn passage off Cornmarket Street, opened in 2026 by three medievalists and a philosopher. Pocket paperbacks and four-figure first editions share the same glass cases.

City Centre · secondhand

St Philip's Books

One of the few shops in Britain built around theology and church history, in a listed medieval building opposite Christ Church Meadow with a Jacobean plasterwork ceiling. A PBFA member since 1995, with Newman first editions and Inklings rarities.

City Centre · secondhand

Arcadia

A doll's-house-sized shop run by Michael and Andrea Keirs since 1975. Vintage paperbacks, old postcards and prints are shelved to a classical soundtrack, more like a small Regency drawing room than a bookshop.

City Centre · new

The Last Bookshop, Magdalen Street

The second Oxford branch of The Last Bookshop, a few minutes' walk from Gloucester Green (it traded as The Book Stop until recently). Shelves of remaindered books at bargain prices, open seven days a week.