Coming up – Great Loves: Anna and Alexei – a forbidden love in Lev Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina On Sunday August 25, Mayflower Bookshop's Great Books series will feature 'Anna Karenina' by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy as the fifth event in the series. After 'War and Peace', this was the second great novel by this Russian […]
On Sunday September 22, Mayflower Bookshop's Great Books series will feature Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan as the sixth event in the series. Bonjour Tristesse took the world by storm as a succès de scandale in 1954 and bestowed instant fame on its author, 19-year-old Françoise Sagan. But not quite literary fame – from the beginning, it was […]
On Sunday October 27, Mayflower Bookshop Great Loves series presents Theodor Fontane’s masterpiece Effi Briest as the 7th lecture in the series. Published in book form in 1895, Effi Briest marks both a watershed and a climax in the poetic realism of literature. It can be thematically compared to other novels on 19th-century marriage from […]
On October 16th, Oscar Wilde was born 170 years ago; reason for Mayflower Bookshop to organize a festival on November 10th about this fascinating 19th poet and playwright! Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one […]
On Thursday December 19 at 1930, Mayflower’s Freek Bouricius will continue Mayflower’s Christmas tradition with a reading of a slightly shortened version of Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol. This timeless Christmas story is the perfect preparation for your Christmas!
Dinner for One, a classic on German television for over 40 years (but less well known in Britain) is a short sketch picturing Miss Sophie’s 90th birthday party, featuring her butler James in the roles of her four guests, who have all passed away… For the fifth and last time, this hilarious sketch will be […]
From January 20th to 26th, the annual Leidse Blues & Jazz Week returns, and once again, Mayflower Bookshop is proud to be part of this exciting event. This year, we are transforming our bookshop into a cozy concert venue, bringing live music to our beloved space. We are thrilled to welcome the Theo Naishtat Trio […]
New series: Children’s Classics ‘Die jeeste ende daventuren’ (Floris and Blancheflour) Medieval ‘young adult’ stories – Leo van Zanen (lecture in Dutch) After our series ‘Great Books’ and ‘Great Loves’ we start 2025 with a new series: ‘Children’s Classics’. This series includes much-loved international masterpieces such Winnie-the-Pooh, Pinocchio, Sans Famille and Emil und die Detektive, […]
Nice and Naughty – the rebellious children’s verse of Annie M.G. Schmidt As second event in our series Children’s Classics, we cannot omit Dutch author Annie M.G. Schmidt and her rebellious children’s verses. During the ’50s Annie M.G. Schmidt (1911-1995) published eleven collections of verse for children, altogether more than 300 titles. The poem ‘Ik […]
On Monday April 21, Easter Monday, Mayflower Bookshop hosts her annual commemoration of the Bard, on the day closest to his death date and (probable) birthday, April 23. Consisting of both commemoration and a lecture in our series Children’s Classics, we offer the following programme: 16.00 Meeting point at Mayflower Bookshop 16.05 Walk to sonnet […]
Mayflower Bookshop American special (English spoken) – Sold to the lowest bidder? Pleun Bouricius PhD, born and bred in the Netherlands, has lived in the USA for over 40 years. A graduate of Harvard, she also worked in jobs as diverse as truck driver, university lecturer and program director and lived in several states before […]
Mayflower Bookshop invites you to a literary workshop (in English) to explore Edith Wharton’s world of wealth, ambition, and social constraint. This workshop will investigate how Wharton’s novels, especially The Age of Innocence, expose the tensions of New York’s Gilded Age, offering a sharp critique of its opulence and rigid expectations. Through discussion and analysis, we will […]