Test Centre Books is a bookdealing company which specialises primarily in the British Poetry Revival, the Mimeograph Revolution, underground and lowlife literature, and aspects of film and modern art.

Much of our stock can be viewed and searched at AbeBooks, and we welcome queries about our many items which are not online. We also issue two catalogues per year of new stock, in Spring and Autumn, prior to putting the items on AbeBooks. Our latest catalogue can be viewed below. If you would like to receive future catalogues, or contact us in general, please email Will Shutes at will[at]testcentre.org.uk, or sign up to our digital mailing list below.

We are keen to buy individual items and collections suggested by our catalogues and stock, and we are equally interested in unusual and unfamiliar books and magazines. We are also experienced at working with archives and building libraries, and are available to work on projects large or small.

Test Centre Books developed out of Test Centre Publications LLP, which was run by Will Shutes and Jess Chandler from 2011 to 2018, releasing spoken word records and cassettes, numerous books, and eight issues of a fiction and poetry magazine. Available stock can still be purchased from Jess Chandler's new publishing project, Prototype.

We will continue to publish on an occasional basis, with a focus on large projects. Please note, however, that we are not accepting unsolicited submissions, and are unable to offer internships.

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'It's not like revisiting the past, it is the past (a Powys multiverse).’ — Iain Sinclair to Jeff Johnson

Fascicle V of Jeff Johnson's The Works of Iain Sinclair: A Descriptive Bibliography and Biographical Chronology, covering the years 1999 to 2012, is now ready to order.

Proceeding directly on from Fascicles I-IV (published in 2018 and 2019) this immense volume, for which Sinclair has written a special introduction, was by far the most challenging to compile due to the sheer mass of material, covering as it does the most prolific years of its subject’s oeuvre.

This is the era of the big books, and the amount of Sinclair’s mainstream contributions increases, as the poetry diminishes and the book catalogues peter out. Mostly the emphasis moves outward, away from London.

It is also the era of collaboration and of Sinclair as performer. The subject matter and types of events at which he is invited to speak change, as his ‘brand’ morphs from author of ‘speculative’ fiction to urban/architectural pundit.

The fascicle ends with a post-Olympic return to little magazines, and with a letter establishing contact for what would become a decade-long collaboration – a trend towards the past that will continue into the next fascicle.

As always, there is a striking consistency to Sinclair’s output, wherein current concerns or topics often lead directly into the next project, and where ideas encountered along the way are incorporated into the work in hand.

The academic autopsies, begun at the end of Fascicle IV, continue, with conferences devoted solely to Sinclair’s work. This attention culminates in the purchase of his archive by the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas and a serendipitously timed letter from a would-be bibliographer in December 2012.

An essential resource for Sinclair studies, Johnson's multi-volume work, meticulously researched since 2012, is at once scholarly, experimental, and informal. The Bibliography details items authored by Sinclair, items edited and published by Sinclair, and Sinclair's contributions to books and periodicals. The Chronology documents the author's life as it relates to the work, the two being considered by Johnson as inseparable.

Included are: compilations/descriptions of 'lost' and/or rare Sinclair material, recovered from various repositories; numerous transcriptions of both recovered and never-before-published text by Sinclair; documentation of the wider scenes in which he was working during these years; and examples of his correspondence.

As per the previous volume this fascicle is published in paperback, A4 format in the style of a 1970s poetry magazine, and is a monstrous 668 pages.

This size (where Fascicles I-III were 510pp and Fascicle IV was 444pp) is reflected in the price, as are increases in paper, printing and shipping costs. 

We stress that, as with all of the volumes, no profit is being made. The book has been priced to cover printing/distribution costs only, with any monies left over used to keep the effort going.

Order your copy of Fascicle V of Jeff Johnson's The Works of Iain Sinclair: A Descriptive Bibliography and Biographical Chronology using the PayPal options below. Please note that due to customs information required after Brexit, customers in Europe (outside of the UK) should order via our AbeBooks pages. All customers will be emailed tracking references after their book has shipped; please bear with us in the interim. Copies of Fascicle IV can still be ordered (via email or via AbeBooks).