Made famous by Shaun Bythell, in his Confessions of a Bookseller, Bythell has this to say about this book: Although Muir attempted to pass this off as a genuine diary, it quickly becomes obvious from reading it that this is a work of fiction, and Baxter—charming, knowledgeable, frustrated, and vaguely incompetent—is Muir’s parody of the booksellers he encountered in Edinburgh at the time in which he wrote it. Booksellers in fiction appear to conform to one of several stereotypes, and Muir’s protagonist certainly conforms to the most obvious; the autodidact who believes that his hard-learned knowledge entitles him to a better life than the lot he has been cast. Despite the inevitable bitterness that accompanies such a character, Baxter is someone to whom it is impossible not to warm as the book unfolds, and his final realization that he is content with his quiet life in a small Scottish bookshop comes as no surprise at the conclusion of the book.