Inside a UK Charity Shop, a Rare To Kill a Mockingbird

A charity shop worker's hunch just sent a literary classic straight into Britain's national archives. Staff at Oxfam's Portobello Road bookshop in London were sorting through a box of donated American titles when manager Olivia Haysman-Walker spotted a copy of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and decided to inspect it more closely, reports the BBC. She soon realized it was a first US edition of the 1960 novel, with a worn but intact dust jacket and well-preserved pages.

"We realized quite quickly that we had something really special," Haysman-Walker says. Oxfam notes that the book has now been acquired by the British Library, where it will join the national collection. The discovery comes during Oxfam's "Secondhand September" campaign, which promotes buying used goods and, in this case, underscores the occasional presence of rare finds on shelves.