Adrian Mitchell and one of his many bookcases

IT is the product of a lifetime’s passion for the written word – a collection of thousands of titles, many first editions and signed by the authors, and owned by one of the nation’s best loved poets.

Now the library of the late writer Adrian Mitchell and his wife Celia has been donated this week to a second-hand bookshop in Kentish Town, meaning customers can take home a tome that was once owned by two cultural colossuses.

Adrian, who died in 2008, was a celebrated poet and playwright.

Celia, who passed away last year, was a well known actor.

The pair, who lived in Dartmouth Park, not only had a house full of books but ran Ripping Yarns – the legendary children’s book shop on the Archway Road.

When Celia passed away, her daughter, Sasha faced the difficult task of deciding what to do with the shelves of books and decided her parents would have liked them to be used to support Amnesty International.

They are now at the human rights charity’s shop in Kentish Town.

Beth Hayman at the Amnesty International book shop in Kentish Town with one of Mr Mitchell’s anthologies – with a front cover illustrated by Ralph Steadman

The collection includes many Edwardian and Victorian children’s books, which were part of the stock at Ripping Yarns and plenty on politics, history and feminism.

Amnesty bookshop manager Beth Hayman told the New Journal of the sense of excitement as volunteers sifted through the collection.

She said: “It is like having a slice of cultural history. We are so grateful. We are taking our time sorting through them – there are a lot of unique children’s books, and lots of poetry and drama.

“There are lots of first editions in the first batch we went through, a lot of very unique books.”

The books have clearly been owned by a pair of bibliophiles, Ms Hayman said, adding: “Many have really beautiful covers and they have all been really well looked after and are in great condition.”

Adrian had many friends in the literary, theatre and artistic worlds.

Ms Hayman said: “We have found, for example, books by Ralph Steadman which had been signed and given to Adrian. There are lots of books signed by the authors with dedications to him inside.”

The couple’s daughter, Sasha, said the decision to hand over the books was the right thing to do, but it had also been hard to part with her parents carefully collated books.

She said: “Dad supported Amnesty so it made sense. Short of opening another bookshop, it was hard to know what to do with the collection.”

She said staff had found manuscripts of her father’s work as they went through the books, which they had returned to her to keep.

She added: “It is full of things that influenced him as a writer, books he used for research. He just read all the time.

“The shop volunteers keep saying to me it is taking them so long to go through them all and they keep stopping and saying – look at this, look at this. They have what we call the “book sickness” – a passion for them, so it shows it was the right place to donate the titles.”

Ms Hayman added: “We will be filtering some out for sale and we will have dedicated shelf for them in the shop. Some will be sold online, and at auctions, and we are planning a pop up event solely focusing on their library.”

Ms Hayman said the, the collection has many volumes she would love to own herself, but one in particular stands out.

She said: “There is a first edition of James Baldwin’s  The Fire Next Time that I found and if I could, I would truly love to keep.”