Donlon Books is an independent bookshop and publisher located at 75 Broadway Market in the diverse creative community of London’s Borough of Hackney.
Since opening our first space in 2008, we have built a strong reputation for stocking an idiosyncratic range of new and rare titles, periodicals and printed matter, with a focus on photography, art, critical theory, LGBT literature, music, fashion, counterculture, erotica, and esoterica. We source our stock from independent publishers, international book fairs, research trips abroad, and often directly from artists, writers, and photographers.
We support and promote a culture of independent publishing by regularly presenting book launches, readings, screenings and curated window displays at our Broadway Market shop. We’ve hosted events for Wolfgang Tillmans, David Armstrong, Stephen Gill, Sara MacKillop, Jean-Michel Wicker, Paul Buck, David Noonan, Viviane Sassen, DoBeDo, Eileen Myles and The Archive of Modern Conflict, among many others. You can follow us on Instagram for news of upcoming events.
In 2013, we published our first book, Malicious Damage, about the stolen library books of British playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. In late 2015 we released our second title, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians – the first full-length work to explore the innovative cultural production of the English camping and hiking organization The Kibbo Kift (1920-1932), the 2nd edition of which we reprinted in 2021. Teddy Girls brought together film maker Ken Russell's previously unpublished photographs of this rarely documented post WW2 female London subculture, and was published by us under Happy Dancer in 2020.
Our website features an edited selection of the titles that we currently stock, but if there is a particular book you are after which isn’t listed here, please get in touch and we will do our best to source it. Any purchase made can be shipped worldwide, however – if you find yourself in London please pay us a visit.
