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Voltaire & Rousseau - Joe & Eddie McGonigle

Voltaire & Rousseau is a well established second-hand bookshop. Started in Otago Lane in 1972 it has customers who've been with us from the first year of opening.

We tend to get offered a lot of French and foreign literature (because of the name of the shop), but we don't really specialise in any subject, although we do sell a lot of Scottish books.

Students, authors, journalists, book collectors and general browsers make up the kind of variety of people who come into the shop.

A.L. Kennedy, Bernard McLaventy, Tom Leonard, Barry Humphries, Dennis Healey, Pat Kane, Rev. Ian Paisley, Alexander Trocchi (deceased), Margaret Attwood are some of the more famous people who have been customers.

We keep in touch with customers' wants and have emailed old customers recently in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia about new stock of maths titles.

Joe and Eddie are the two brothers who run the shop. Business started in 1972 by Joseph and Gerard (Gerard is now retired from second-hand books).

We will do book searches if people are trying to find an out-of-print title or titles.

We source our own books from people coming through the door to sell, auctions, bereavement and visiting people in their houses who wish to sell the lot or downsize their collection.

We open six days a week (we close on Sundays).

We can do free valuations on books if they are brought to the shop. We also do house-calls to value books for insurance purposes.

Eddie collects books on theology. Joe is interested in books on economics and financial crashes.

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