Ladybird books

[Anita Bensoussane]

We found a most interesting TIMESHIFT programme on catch up last evening, THE BUG THAT GOT BRITAIN READING on the huge success story of Ladybird Books, really engaging!

Ah yes - that programme was mentioned in several posts on pages 4 and 5 of this thread. I remember thoroughly enjoying it as it was so enthusiastically presented and packed with information.

[floragord]

Absolutely, Anita, it was lovely to find a documentary as interesting, so many are "facts and figures", and as exciting as reading a laundry list. It is some time now since we enjoyed the Ladybird exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion of happy memory in Bexhill, that was excellent too.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I went to that exhibition when it came to the House of Illustration in King's Cross in July 2015. It was quite an experience to see the original artwork for books which have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've picked up a handful of interesting Ladybird books recently so thought I'd talk about them here.

Earlier today I went to a local antiques shop and came out with Malaysian Tales (£2) and How to Make Dolls (£1.50). I hadn't heard of Malaysian Tales before but it dates from 1988 and has illustrations by Ahmad Zakii Hj Anwar. It contains traditional Malaysian stories accompanied by pictures of wild animals, royalty, peasants and wooden houses on stilts. The introduction says that there are four tales "each illustrating a moral with gentle humour", the titles being 'The Vain Leopard', 'The Buffalo Princesses', 'The Famous Fool' and 'The Strongest Man Below the Wind'. I look forward to reading it!

How to Make Dolls (1978) is lovely as it includes unusual dolls like a jump-up doll (it pops up out of a container when you push a stick), an astronaut and a mermaid. The book gives the histories of clay dolls, rag dolls, peg dolls and a three-faced china doll too.

The other day I also bought The Ladybird Book of Bedtime Rhymes from a secondhand bookshop. It was £8 but dates from 1960 and has a very good dustwrapper. Some of the rhymes are rather odd (e.g. there's one about a girl being told not to cry because each time she cries a robin redbreast dies!) but the appealing illustrations by George Brook (Secret Seven artist) are the chief attraction.

From the same shop I got a lovely early version of Piggly Plays Truant with a dustwrapper and a beautiful dustwrappered copy of The Sleepy Water Vole (£4 each). I already had them both, but in later/inferior editions.

Ladybird produced some real gems over the years. Not only is the content entertaining and informative but the artwork is often truly stunning.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yesterday I had a day off work so I went to see the Ladybird Exhibition at the Museum of Gloucester. It was excellent, with original artwork on display from some of my favourite Ladybird artists (Eric Winter, Harry Wingfield, Martin Aitchison, John Kenney, Frank Hampson and Robert Lumley), together with photographs of children that they used as models for their pictures. The actual doll's pram belonging to the girl who posed as Jane (of 'Peter and Jane') was in the exhibition. At least one painting of the pram - perhaps more - appeared in the books.

A label next to some of Robert Lumley's artwork mentioned that the village in The Gingerbread Boy was based on Hatfield Broad Oak in Essex, while the village in The Little Red Hen was based on Hambledon in Hampshire.

There were also letters written by various people involved with the publication of the books, discussing things like details of illustrations (e.g. whether King Henry II had a beard or not), new ideas and new markets. A receipt showed that John Kenney received £360.00 in 1964 for his artwork for the Ladybird book Charles Dickens.

I parted with some of my money in the gift shop, buying four secondhand Ladybirds - How to Swim and Dive (which I recall Pete mentioning on the forums in the past), Learning to Ride, The Rocket and Food. Food has quirky, colourful illustrations by Frank Hampson and he has drawn a lovely picture of Covent Garden Market as it was when the book was published (1968), with fruit and vegetables on the stalls and sacks and crates piled high.

I had two or three other literary experiences during the day as I visited the quaint little Beatrix Potter Shop (Beatrix Potter used that building as the inspiration for the shop in The Tailor of Gloucester and it now has displays of furniture and models resembling the book illustrations) and I also looked round Gloucester Cathedral (the beautiful cloisters were used for parts of Hogwarts in some of the Harry Potter films). I learnt about former Gloucester resident Jemmy Wood too, a tight-fisted bank owner who may have had an influence on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Bleak House.

I wandered around the historic docks as well, and went to an antiques centre and a couple of charity shops where I bought The Girl Who Walked on Air by Emma Carroll and Pocomoto and the Night Riders by Rex Dixon (who wrote the "Joey" books as Robert Martin). All in all, a most enjoyable day.

[Katharine]

Sounds lovely Anita. It's a pity Gloucester is so far away from Suffolk, as I'd love to be able to see the exhibition.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Apparently it's a touring exhibition and has been to a number of places, though I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago. It's due to go to Great Yarmouth after Gloucester (around the end of September) if that's of any use, Katharine:

https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/the-lad ... xhibition/

[Boatbuilder]

It sounds like it's following me around, Anita. Having lived in Gloucester in the early 80's and now just 10 miles away from Great Yarmouth....

Incidentally, do you know you were a mere couple of hundred meters away from the infamous 'Cromwell Street' whilst at the Museum of Gloucester?

Subject to circumstances (Covid) we may have to make the journey up the A47 in September to have a look. I am sure my daughter who lives locally will be interested as well as she was brought up on Ladybird books.

[timv]

I remember the Ladybird Books adaptations of 'Well-Loved Tales' - traditional folk tales, mainly taken from the Grimm Brothers' C19th German collection - very well from primary school; it was a major teaching aid in my class when I was five. This would have been the mid-1960s; my (small, family/ friends -run private) school in Lymington had one collection of these books and I had some myself but more of the historical ones.

Robert Lumley (1920 - 1976) was the main illustrator of the folk tales adaptations; there is an article on him and his work at Hatfield Broad Oak village in Essex (where he and his wife lived) on the Ladybird Books website at: 'ladybirdflyawayhome/ robert-lumley'. Some of the tales mentioned are ones where I still remember the charming illustrations, eg 'The Musicians of Bremen'; apparently RO asked various locals to pose for some of them.

Hatfield Broad Oak must have been used to London-based literary/ art figures working there after the Second World War, presumably as it was rural but within a reasonably short train journey of their offices in London. Another childrens literature figure who lived there was David Faber, aka 'David Severn' of the Faber publishing family, who wrote a 1940s series about a group of four children and their adult male 'Back To Nature' expert mentor exploring the district - 'A Cabin For Crusoe' (1943) and successors. Some of the storylines in this may have given Enid ideas for what would appeal to readers in the Mistletoe Farm books , such as the 'hermit who wanders around reciting poetry and who the local farmers think is rather odd' (Mr 'Crusoe' Robinson in this case) being mixed up in a local crime mystery - wrongly accused, in this case. He has elements of Mr Twigg and 'Benedict' the hermit in the MF series and Tammylan in Cherry Tree Farm.

[Katharine]

Thanks Anita.

Great Yarmouth would be fairly easy for me to get to, I've often caught the train up there for a day out.

I'll keep my fingers crossed that I'll be able to visit the exhibition there. Gloucester sounds an interesting place to visit, so maybe I'll be able to get there one day.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Gloucester is indeed very interesting, Katharine. I'd like to return one of these days to visit the National Waterways Museum and climb the cathedral tower (the tower is only accessible on a guided tour, but tower tours aren't running at the moment because of Covid-19).

Incidentally, do you know you were a mere couple of hundred meters away from the infamous 'Cromwell Street' whilst at the Museum of Gloucester?

No, I didn't give a second's thought to the Wests!

I remember the Ladybird Books adaptations of 'Well-Loved Tales' - traditional folk tales, mainly taken from the Grimm Brothers' C19th German collection - very well from primary school; it was a major teaching aid in my class when I was five. This would have been the mid-1960s; my (small, family/ friends -run private) school in Lymington had one collection of these books and I had some myself but more of the historical ones.

Robert Lumley (1920 - 1976) was the main illustrator of the folk tales adaptations; there is an article on him and his work at Hatfield Broad Oak village in Essex (where he and his wife lived) on the Ladybird Books website at: 'ladybirdflyawayhome/ robert-lumley'. Some of the tales mentioned are ones where I still remember the charming illustrations, eg 'The Musicians of Bremen'; apparently RO asked various locals to pose for some of them.

I came across the Well-Loved Tales at the library when I was about three (in 1973) and enjoyed them so much that my mum started buying them for my sister and me. There were 27 books in the series up to 1979, when more titles were added and the style changed. According to the following list (scroll down to series 606d), Robert Lumley and Eric Winter illustrated thirteen titles each (though one of Robert Lumley's was done jointly with John Berry) and the remaining one was illustrated by Capaldi:

https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/wp-cont ... t2020b.pdf

Although I'm very fond of Robert Lumley's illustrations, Eric Winter's have the edge for me. Lumley often added a touch of comedy while Winter generally went for wonder and enchantment. His pictures are magnificent, rich with colour and texture and emotion, and I've loved them all my life.

The exhibition at Gloucester included photos of some of the people Robert Lumley used as models, as well as a photo of Eric Winter's wife who was the model for Cinderella. The following illustrations by Eric Winter show Cinderella in her three ballgowns:



(https://www.wordsandpics.org/2017/09/an ... which.html)

[Katharine]

Apparently it's a touring exhibition and has been to a number of places, though I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago. It's due to go to Great Yarmouth after Gloucester (around the end of September) if that's of any use, Katharine:

https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/the-lad ... xhibition/

I'd completely forgotten that Anita had told me it was coming to Great Yarmouth, but fortunately my parents spotted an item about it on the local news just before Christmas.

The exhibition finishes next week, and so today my parents, my youngest daughter and I hoped on a couple of trains, and went to see it.

It was well worth the effort - the wall of Ladybird books (almost 500) is amazing. If anyone can is interested/can help me post it, I had a photo taken of me standing next to all the books to give a sense of just how many there are.

It made me realise just how many more I need to collect - some of the titles I'd never heard or, but I like a challenge.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Following Anita's recommendation, I went up to Gloucester to see the Ladybird exhibition, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Thanks!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm glad you enjoyed the exhibition, Katharine and Viv.

[Boatbuilder]

If anyone can is interested/can help me post it, I had a photo taken of me standing next to all the books to give a sense of just how many there are.

It made me realise just how many more I need to collect - some of the titles I'd never heard or, but I like a challenge.

Katharine, you should have my email address so if you email it to me I'll post it for you or send you the link to post it yourself. In case you haven't still got it I'll PM you with it.