About Avenue Victor Hugo Books

Vincent McCaffrey wrote his college thesis on bookselling and sold books from a pushcart before opening Avenue Victor Hugo Books in 1975.

For nearly 30 years, Avenue Victor Hugo Books was a fixture of Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay, at one time holding over a quarter-million magazines and 150,000 used books. Awarded “Best Used Bookstore” multiple times by Boston Magazine, the store was a favorite of Boston-area authors and college students alike. During its years on Newbury Street, Avenue Victor Hugo also played host to Fiction, Galileo, and Galaxy magazines, all published by McCaffrey.

In 2016, Vince and his wife, Thais Coburn, moved Avenue Victor Hugo to the quiet town of Lee, New Hampshire, 10 minutes from the University of New Hampshire campus in Durham.

The new location, a 250-year-old post-and-beam barn, is open to browsers on Fridays and Saturdays between 10am and 6pm. The shop carries good reading copies and first editions of the best in fiction, history, biography, poetry, drama, and more as well as collectible magazines, including many pulps, Harper’s, Atlantic, Life, Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, Playbill, Punch, Theatre Arts, and hundreds of others.

The store’s relocation to New Hampshire has been featured on WBGH Boston News, WVCB’s Boston Chronicle, NHPR, and WMUR’s New Hampshire Chronicle. Avenue Victor Hugo has also recently been featured in New Hampshire magazine, The Boston Globe, UNH’s The New Hampshire, The New Hampshire Union Leader, Foster’s Daily Democrat.

The store retains its Back Bay charm by offering something that online book shopping can’t: the serendipity of discovery that only comes from browsing shelves of old books and the guidance that only a curmudgeonly old bookseller can offer.

To stay connected with the store, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or subscribe to our very-infrequent email newsletter.

Avenue Victor Hugo offers signed copies of Vince’s own novels, which are available to preview or purchase at vincentmccaffrey.com. You can join the conversation about Vince’s writing and get notified when new books are released by following him on Goodreads.

We look forward to seeing you at the shop.