Every bookshop in Oxford
Oxford is a city of books and bookshops. Reporting on a new opening in the city centre encouraged your Clarion team to think about their favourites ...
Independent bookshops
Caper, Magdalen Road
Children's books, cookery books, and more in East Oxford's Magdalen Road Village since 2023. There’s even a wardrobe leading to Narnia at the back of the shop. Managers Miranda and Xander provide Clarion book recommendations.
Website: caper.fun
Curio, Little Clarendon Street
Literally an underground bookshop, hidden in the basement of Common Ground café on Little Clarendon Street. Owner Nick opened Curio in 2023 to sell secondhand books as well as zines. It's also one of the cheapest event spaces for hire in central Oxford. Open Wed-Sat.
Website: curiobookshop.co.uk
Gulp Fiction, Covered Market
In the heart of the Covered Market since 2022, Oliver and his team sell books and coffee to accompany them (get a 'free coffee with your copy' of any of their recommendations). Find your way upstairs for more books and a cosy sofa hideaway.
Website: gulpfictionbooks.com
Barker & Co, off Cornmarket
Handsome secondhand books in a handsome setting. Barker Books opened in May 2026 in the Golden Cross, the passage which connects the Covered Market and Cornmarket. Run by three medievalists and a philosopher, it sells serious fiction and non-fiction.
More on Instagram
Specialists and subject-specific
St Philip's Books and Alice's Shop on St Aldate's; Austin Sherlaw-Johnson on the High Street
St Philip's Books, St Aldate’s
An old-school bookshop occupying two mazelike rooms in a 15th-century building opposite Christ Church Meadow, St Philip's Books specialise in theology and history, with a particular interest in the Inklings. (They also sell through AbeBooks.) Next door is Alice's Shop, a tiny tourist temptation which sells Lewis Carroll in two dozen different editions.
Website: stphilipsbooks.co.uk
(The Oxford Oratory on Woodstock Road has a small shop selling Catholic books, but St Andrew's Christian bookshop on St Clement's closed during the pandemic.)
Austin Sherlaw-Johnson, High Street
At the back of Antiques on High, on the… (you’re there already), is one of the best secondhand sheet music stores we’ve seen anywhere: instrumental and vocal, solo and ensemble. Plus books about classical music and a miscellany of old programmes.
Website: austinsj.co.uk
Museum of Oxford gift shop, St Aldate’s
MOx in the Town Hall is the place to go for local history publications, especially on the history of the city, as well as prints by local artists.
Website: museumofoxford.org
The Story Museum, Pembroke Street
A small but perfectly formed selection of new and classic children's books with all your favourite characters.
Website: storymuseum.org.uk
Secondhand, charity, and remainders
Oxfam Books, around Oxford
Oxfam Books on Turl Street and St Giles'
Oxfam's first dedicated bookshop opened in 1987 on St Giles', and was recently reprieved from college expansion plans. Another branch is on Turl Street, both offering two floors of arts, sciences, and fiction. The general Oxfam shops in Cowley Road, Headington, and Summertown all sell books, as does the Oxfam Superstore in the business park in Cowley.
Website: oxfam.org.uk
(Other charity shops vary widely in how much space they devote to books. Mercy in Action in Templars Square has lots of books, cheap & cheerful; Helen & Douglas House in Rose Hill and Headington have lots of stock too.)
The Last Bookshop, Walton Street and Magdalen Street
A miniature chain of four remainder bookshops of which two are in Oxford: one is on Walton Street in Jericho and the other is on Magdalen Street (previously branded 'Book Stop' for its location by the buses). All books £5 or less.
Website: lastbookshopoxford.com
Jason’s Books, off Cowley Road
Pick up a book at the Saturday morning East Oxford Farmers' Market and pay in the honesty box (£2 per book, 3 for £5). A different book stall is often outside Headington market on Saturdays, and there are a couple of stalls in the open-air market at Gloucester Green.
More at the market website
Gift bookshops
Arcadia, St Michael’s Street
A bouquiniste stall of paperbacks invites you into Arcadia where there is a small selection of secondhand books as well as greetings cards and posters.
Bodleian Libraries shops, Broad Street
The Bodleian shops in Schools Quad and the Weston Library
As you might expect, books are a big deal in the Bodleian Library. There are two gift shops, one in the Old Bod and one in the New (now the Weston Library). Both stock exhibition tie-ins and Bodleian Library Publishing's books about books and language, although the shop in Schools Quad is mostly merch.
Website: bodleianshop.co.uk
Elsewhere in the University, the gift shop in the basement of the Ashmolean is good for art books, while the History of Science Museum and the University Museum of Natural History both sell science books for children (as does Space Store in the Covered Market).
Scriptum, Turl Street
Turl Street's treasure house Scriptum specialises in fine notebooks but also sells a small range of luxury editions of classic books.
Website: scriptum.co.uk
Chains
Daunt Books on Banbury Road; TG Jones on Cornmarket; Waterstones on Queen Street
Daunt Books, Summertown
Like its mother-shop in Marylebone, a distinctive feature of Daunt Books is its division of books geographically, by country or region. So all the books about Spain, about travelling to Spain, set in Spain, or written by Spanish authors are in the same place. There are also solid general fiction and non-fiction offerings and an excellent children's section. There are some cards and stationery, but that's largely left to the Pen to Paper shop just up the road.
Website: dauntbooks.co.uk
TG Jones, Cornmarket
Really. The former WH Smith on Cornmarket has a bookshop hidden away on its mezzanine level, stocking popular fiction, children's books (including school workbooks), and travel. (We remain perplexed why they invented the ‘TG Jones’ name while the old John Menzies brand was there for the taking.) Meanwhile, an actual WH Smith remains in Oxford railway station selling the top 10 fiction, non-fiction, and children's books. Website: tgjonesonline.co.uk
Waterstones, Queen Street
National chain Waterstones moved to Queen Street at the end of 2025 in a bright two-floor shop. Fiction is upstairs and non-fiction downstairs, along with the café.
Website: waterstones.com
Blackwell's, Broad Street and Westgate
Blackwell's on both sides of Broad Street and in the Westgate
The OG, nearly 150 years old, but bought by Waterstones in 2022. The main shop is a four-floor wonderland on Broad Street (with Caffè Nero upstairs). There are 150,000 academic books in the vast basement Norrington Room, which absorbed the Oxford University Press bookshop that closed during the pandemic.
You will also find: a music department staffed by experts; enthusiastic children's booksellers; foreign-language novels; rare books going up to thousands of pounds (as well as secondhand and remainders); and a new room dedicated to books about Oxford. Across the road is the specialist Manga & Science Fiction shop, with a small branch in the Westgate near John Lewis. And there are author events most days of the week.
Website: blackwells.co.uk
Book fairs
Oxford Premier Book Fair
Rare books, from £ to £££££ (and if you're in that market, drop in to Mallams auctioneers on St Michael's Street).
Oxford Indie Book Fair
Bringing together small press and self-publishing writers and editors.
Oxford Literary Festival Bookshop
Pop-up bookstalls inside the Weston Library every spring to accompany the national authors at the major Oxford Literary Festival.
Free books
You'll stumble across free book boxes all over the city. Your Clarion writers know of some on Aristotle Lane and Cowley Road and Marlborough Court ...
And don't forget your local library! In the city, there are branch libraries in the Westgate, as well as Barton, Blackbird Leys, Botley, Headington, Littlemore, Old Marston, Summertown, and Temple Cowley. Sign up for a library card to get access to ebooks, audiobooks, online magazines, and digital reference. The independent Oxford Poetry Library is a library in a cargo bike, open on Saturdays.
Around the county
Oxfam’s new bookshop in Chipping Norton.
Almost every Oxfordshire market town has either an independent bookshop or (in Didcot, Witney and Banbury) a Waterstones. Outlets like Jaffé & Neale in Chipping Norton, Coles in Bicester and The Book House in Thame are a delight, combining the bestsellers you’d expect with a curated collection of the booksellers’ favourites. Even small towns like Woodstock and Burford have their own indies.
Secondhand books are dominated again by Oxfam. Their recently relocated Chipping Norton branch is at least the equal of the Oxford Oxfams, but there are outlets in Witney, Thame, Henley, and Wallingford too. Small indies for secondhand books include Kellow Books in Chipping Norton and a couple in Henley, but the stand-out is Regent Books in Wantage with over 100,000 volumes on its shelves.
The idiosyncratic cataloguing system at Caper on Magdalen Road.