Product Description
30 volumes.
All 1st edition apart from 3.
Printed early 1940s.
Each volume has a mix of plates and photos, some in colour.
Decorative printed boards, all have dust-jackets repeating the boards pattern, intact apart from 2 small tears & rubbing on spine head and tail.
All books in very good condition with most being 1st editions - see list below for exceptions The complete set comprised 141 volumes.
This series was begun as an attempt to record all aspects of the British way of life in case the war should irreversibly change it.
As a mixture of propaganda and scholastic enterprise, it is surely one of the most amazing products of its kind ever conceived, let alone achieved.
The plethora of (now) famous writers and artists who contributed when many (if not most) were still fairly unknown is a tribute to the wisdom and skills of the editors W.
J.
Turner and Sheila Shannon.
Authors and artists include: Cecil Beaton, John Betjeman, Edmund Blunden, Rose Macaulay, Kate O'brien, Sean O'Faolain,to name but a few.
The authors were mostly in their thirties during the war, few of them yet the household names many have since become.
The complete list of this collection is below.
Paul Breman wrote: "The acceptable face of jingoism, a splendid record of a bygone age, this series was a calculated attempt to boost flagging wartime morale, but it far outgrew its original scope and lived on through the bleak and even more depressing postwar years of seemingly endless rationing.
Conceived (by Hilda Matheson, recruited for 'special work' by the Foreign Office in 1939) as a series of monographs, these Collins books add up to a unique picture of life in Britain when still an Empire - a fact reflected in a series of volumes on the 'colonies' in its varied historical, cultural, sporting, technical, environmental, natural, sociological and political aspects.
The Government of Britain - G.
M.
Young 2nd edition Women's Institutes by Cicely McCall English Letter Writers by C.
E.
Vulliamy English Social Service by Sir George Newman British Seamen by David Matthew Life Among the English by Rose Macauley The English at Table by John Hampson British Postage Stamps by S.
C.
Johnson The Londoner by Dorothy Nicholson British Cartoonists by David Low Britain in the Air by Nigel Tangye English Farming by Sir John Russell 3rd edition Battle Fields in Britain by C.
V.
Wedgwood British Scientists by Sir Richard Gregory English Inns by Thomas Burke Boy Scouts by E.
E.
Reynolds English Diaries and Journals by Kate O'Brien British Philosophers by Kenneth Matthews The Story of Ireland by Sean O'Faolain The English Ballet by W.
J.
Turner English Fashion by Alison Settle The English Poets by Lord David Cecil - reprint British Mountaineers by F.
S.
Smythe British Soldiers by S.
H.
F.
Johnston British Photographers by Cecil Beaton British Rebels and Reformers by Harry Roberts The British Red Cross by Dermot Morrah English Cities and Small Towns by John Betjemen English Gardens by Harry Roberts English.
.
.
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