Daunt Books will open a new location early next year in Summertown, Oxford, the Bookseller reported.
The 1,800-square-foot store will feature travel, fiction, history, biography and poetry sections, as well as a large children's area. It will reside in a building that formerly housed a bank and, according to the Bookseller, will be Oxford's first independent bookstore since the Book House closed in June of last year. The store is looking to recruit five to six booksellers, and plans to open "early in the new year."
It will be the first new Daunt Books store branded as such to open in nearly 10 years, since Daunt's Cheapside location opened in 2010. The company did, however, open two new stores in 2016 under different names. All told, it will be the seventh official Daunt Books store and the 10th owned by the company.
Daunt Books was founded by James Daunt, who has been the managing director of the U.K. chain Waterstones since 2011. In June of this year, Daunt also became the CEO of Barnes & Noble, after the hedge fund Elliott Advisors, owner of Waterstones, purchased B&N for $683 million. Daunt Books includes a publishing division, Daunt Books Publishing.