Obituary: Michael Hosking

Michael Hosking, bookseller: born Woodstock, Cape Province 7 February 1929; died Canterbury, Kent 3 September 1994.

THE MAGNUM OPUS of Michael Hosking, the gentle and unassuming bookdealer from Deal, was the thick catalogue David Garnett: a writer's library (1983), which has become a standard work of Bloomsbury reference. It runs to more than 3,400 items, relating not only to the Bloomsbury Group with which the novelist David Garnett is so identified, but also to such writers as TE Lawrence, whom he edited, and DH Lawrence, whom his father Edward Garnett edited; to his father's friends Joseph Conrad and Henry James; to the Nonesuch Press, of which he was a founding director; and to his mother Constance Garnett's passion for Russian literature, in which she was a pioneering translator.

Hosking combined a fine judgement of quality in books old and new with absolute reliability in matters of business. The bookshops in which he worked or which he visited when selling or buying were enlivened by his genial presence, and he had the magic gift of making difficult tasks easy.

He came to his metier from a most improbable background. He was born in South Africa, at Woodstock, Cape Province, in humble circumstances, and was brought up by his mother, who was determined that her children should do well and worked very hard to provide the means. At the age of 14 or so, Hosking thus found a place on the General Botha, a training ship for those destined for a career at sea. Four years later he joined the merchant navy. He was not particularly unhappy, although he had already come to realise that it was not the life he wanted. He was, however, able to read a lot, a foundation that stood him in good stead.

In 1950 he abandoned the sea and went to work at Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford. Six years later, by a natural progression, he moved to London and Better Books in the Charing Cross Road. It had been founded by Tony Godwin, then at the height of his career, and its modern, all-glass exterior and the light wood shelves and bright lighting inside were a complete novelty; the stock and its display were equally original. By now Hosking's gifts of unforced salesmanship were evident. The Oxford University Press took an interest in Better Books, and it became its London showcase; it also took an interest in Hosking, who moved to Amen House in 1960, becoming home sales manager.

The 1960s were a lively period for the book trade and particularly so for OUP. Penguin's monopoly of serious paperbacks was being challenged, and the Oxford list, part academic, part general, was at its best with Mabel George's children's books notably in the ascendant. Hosking enjoyed his part in this and organised his marketing and sales force with quiet but thorough efficiency. He was less happy to stay in London, however, and in 1966 left to set up independently in Kent, at Deal.

At first he did a postal business, 'armchair bookselling' new and, increasingly, second-hand books. In 1969 came a new challenge, the chance to buy a beautiful medieval building with a shop on the ground floor on the sea-front. 'The Golden Hind', a restaurant- cum-bookshop, came into existence. Both aspects of it were successful, too much so, in fact, and Hosking had to choose which to maintain. The books won, to the great distress of the gourmets of east Kent. In 1974 he returned briefly to his old job at OUP, to help out in a crisis, but returned thankfully to Deal and 'The Golden Hind'.

There the book business grew, in quality and quantity. Hosking designed a handsome 'Golden Hind' device for himself and began to issue catalogues, mainly of modern literary first editions chosen with discernment. He devoted one to works by and about TS Eliot, a collection formed by himself. Then in 1983 came his David Garnett catalogue. It was carefully prepared in time for the Antiquarian Book Fair that June, the premier event of the antiquarian booksellers' calendar, but while it was in the press the Post Office changed the Deal telephone code: frustrated callers were beside themselves, but the success of the catalogue was undiminished, and it was the talk of the fair.

In recent years, Hosking retreated a little. 'The Golden Hind' was sold, but he continued to buy and sell books, as popular with the trade as with the customers - he had a wide circle of friends in and around Deal, among them the writer and translator Rayner Heppenstall, some of whom provided stock as well as buying books. Last year osteoporosis of the back attacked him, and in June he was forced to give up bookselling altogether.