Steven Temple is an antiquarian bookseller who, after operating shops on Queen Street in Toronto for forty years, moved to Welland, Ontario in 2014 where he now does business out of his home. He continues to specialize in literary books, especially Canadian literary books, general Canadiana, and select out-of-print and rare books in various fields.
We met at his home in Welland, where we discussed, among other things, his passion for finding "lost" Canadian literature, parasites on the Internet, the urgency to buy, poet Frank Prewett, rarity, utility bills, stories about books, examples of lost Canadian literature, Watters's Checklist of Canadian Literature, Steven's criteria for buying books, Robertson Davies, William Golding, Graham Greene, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, collecting the Governor General's Award for Fiction winners, G. Herbert Sallans's Little Man, artist Fred Varley, Canadian book design, being a pioneer, and patronizing Canada Post.
Bookseller Steven Temple on finding lost Canadian literature, and more