Cornflower Books

Ladybird, Ladybird

    I'm enjoying Clare Pollard's Fierce Bad Rabbits, The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books and have reached the chapter which mentions beloved Ladybird Books (I particularly like the quote from Angela Carter at the end):

    "The Ladybird imprint was begun by Henry Wills and William Hepworth in 1915, with Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. It was intended to produce 'wholesome and healthy literature for children'. The iconic mini-hardback format we associate with the brand, with 56 pages, roughly 4 1/2" by 7", first appeared in 1940 ... It was a response to wartime restrictions on paper supply, with the format chosen because it allowed an entire book to be printed on one large standard sheet of paper ... then folded and cut to size ...The distinct aesthetic was also created by a decision not to use children's illustrators but, instead, established commercial artists. While Ladybird soon became famous for non-fiction and nature titles, it was the 'Well-Loved Tales', designed for easy reading, that my generation learnt, stumblingly, to read from...

    My sister's favourite Ladybird book was The Elves and the Shoemaker* ... She was delighted by all the shoes the elves helped make, with their bright leathers - blue, red, yellow, green; the pink, fringed ankle boots [see them here] - and charmed by the miniaturization: the tiny outfits the shoemaker and his wife stitch for the elves, to say thank you; the absurd stockings laid out next to thimble-sized boots and hats with red feathers. It is a story in which immense powers are used to achieve small domestic goals, making me think of Angela Carter's lovely summation: 'A fairy tale is a story in which one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar.' "

*I had that one but can't lay hands on it - I remember vividly all those shoes and boots!

She sees the garden as her terrain, her domain

    "[...] She plants a row of apple trees along the high brick wall. Two pairs of pear trees on either side of the main path, plums, elder, birch, gooseberry bushes, blush-stemmed rhubarb. She takes a cutting from a dog-rose growing by the river and cultivates it against the warm wall of the malthouse. She puts in a rowan sapling near the back door. She fills the soil with chamomile and marigold, with hyssop and sage, borage and angelica, with wormwort and feverfew. She installs seven skeps at the furthest edge of the garden; on warm July days it is possible to hear the restless rumble of the bees from the house.

    She turns the old brewhouse into a room where she dries her plants, where she mixes them, where people come, in through the side gate, to ask for cures. [...] She clears the old well in the courtyard. She makes a knot garden, with box hedges in an interlocking grid, their vacancies filled with purple-headed lavender."

From Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

                                                  ~~~~~~

Cover illustration by Cally Conway, design by Yeti Lambregts.

An illustrated notebook for dreamers

    I love the look of these new books by Jackie Morris, The Unwinding and its almost wordless pair The Silent Unwinding - "an illustrated notebook for dreamers".

    They will be out tomorrow.

Friday reads

   

    Niall Williams' This Is Happiness is a novel to be savoured - not least because the author is such a wizard with words - so I'm taking my time over this gentle story before moving on to (I think) Ann Patchett's The Dutch House, and if that book's cover image caught your eye, as it did mine, then this video tells all about it.

    From one story of a painting to another, as my next non-fiction read will be Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting by Erica E. Hirshler on the subject of John Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.

    I hope your current reading is absorbing and enriching, and if you have anything to recommend do please let us know.

Design details

    I've been looking forward to Diane Setterfield's new novel for a whole year, I see!

    Publication was put back by a few months, but here it is now and no doubt reading it will be all the sweeter for the lengthy anticipation.

    Before I begin it I wanted to give you a close look at that very striking jacket by Sarah Whittaker.

On my desk today

   

    -    The Illustrated Dust Jacket 1920-1970 by Martin Salisbury - such delights here! More on it soon.

    -    Significant Others: Creativity & Intimate Partnership edited by Whitney Chadwick & Isabelle de Courtivron. "An original and revealing series of essays on artist and writer couples whose literary and artistic renown has been compounded by the fame - or notoriety - of their relationships." This looks fascinating,

    -    as does A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney. Examining creative connections, this book "offers a new perspective on established literary figures" (Tracy Chevalier).

On my desk today

    

    Michelle Paver live - and note what Michelle says about yoga (from 12.45 on);

    the Times's best first lines quiz;

    Cakes and Ale (Maugham pays no heed to the "show, don't tell" 'rule', I see);

    postcards from The Lost Words;

    news of a competition for brave authors!

Monogrammed

    To be published on the 1st. of March next year, a handsome 80th. anniversary edition of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

    I haven't a copy of the book at all so I think I shall invest in that one.

Debossing, sprayed edges, and spot uv

    We've talked often before about book cover design, but this video from Vintage Books looks beyond jacket image at other important design elements and finishing touches.

                                                        ~~~~~

    This one is fun, too.

Following on ...

    ... from yesterday's post, here is one of my favourites from the 'True to Life' exhibition I mentioned on the other blog, another evocative rendition of a farming scene of the wider period of which Alison Uttley writes, this one James Bateman's 'Haytime in the Cotswolds', 1939.

    A reviewer at the time said of it, "This is probably not a particular place as it exists, but that kind of place that you would like it to be." The Country Child is a similarly potent, imaginative recreation of a place.

    C.F. Tunnicliffe, whose work illustrates Alison Uttley's memoir, is the subject of a forthcoming exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts.

    Following on from The Country Child, I'm now reading Ronald Blythe's In the Artist's Garden, which blends "literature, poetry, spirituality and memory as [the author] muses on the world from his garden gate." Perfect.

Of mice and men

    From 10th. May to 3rd. June, The Illustration Cupboard in London is showing an exhibition of Jill Barklem's original artwork for the much-loved Brambly Hedge books. You can find the illustrations here, and note, the sketches may be purchased - prices are to be released soon.

    Also on show at the gallery will be this Storyteller Children's Chair made by RhubarbLondon:

    Two-thirds the size of an adult's wing chair, its front legs have been carved from oak to recreate the Toadflax family's home, and there are speakers in the backrest powered by a self-contained battery system which 'broadcast' the Brambly Hedge stories to the occupier of the chair. Chequebooks at the ready, it costs £3,500.

                            ~~~~~

    On the subject of Brambly Hedge, you may not have seen this post.

To be read: The White Hare

 

    "A lost boy. A dead girl, and one who is left behind.

    Robbie doesn't want anything more to do with death, but life in a village full of whispers and secrets can't make things the way they were.

    When the white hare appears, magical and fleet in the silvery moonlight, she leads them all into a legend, a chase, a hunt.

    But who is the hunter and who the hunted?

    In The White Hare, Michael Fishwick deftly mingles a coming-of-age story with mystery, myth and summer hauntings."

    I like the sound of this novel for children of 12 and up, described as "a mix of tense thriller, magical legend and real life," which is out early next month.

    The jacket design is by Emma Ewbank, by the way.

Period charm

    I found these three novels by O. Douglas in a local secondhand books shop yesterday and I couldn't pass them by; "nice books about nice people" are too few in number, it seems to me, and from what I know of the author, that's a fair summing up of her work.

    The House that is Our Own was first published in 1940, and it bears the following touching dedication to the author's brother, John Buchan, who died early that year:

    "To you, J.B., who with little liking for mild domestic fiction, read patiently my works, blue-pencilling when you had to, praising when you could, encouraging always, I dedicate this story, which you are not here to read, of places you knew and loved."

    I was interested to find this sticker inside the back cover of one of the other books - Binns was a well-known Edinburgh department store, now House of Fraser. That it sold books is news to me, but I suppose such shops did in those long-gone days.

    Turning to the books' dust jackets (and these have plenty of period charm), a couple of short articles on the subject - here and here - may be of interest.

 

Edited to add: I've linked above to two very striking portraits of John Buchan; here is one of his sister herself, the family resemblance marked.

Looking gratefully back and hopefully forward

   

     "If choice must be between two seasons, each so full of charm, it is at least no bad philosophy to prefer the present good, even whilst looking gratefully back, and hopefully forward, to the past and the future."

    From Our Village by Mary Russell Mitford; the cover from my 1909 edition (J.M. Dent, English Idylls series) is shown here.

   

    Wishing you a very happy new year!

Re-jacketed

 

    I mentioned in passing in this post that I wasn't keen on the current covers for my favourite Nancy Mitford novels. Happily for those sharing my opinion and looking to buy them now, the books have been re-jacketed to mark the 70th. anniversary of publication of The Pursuit of Love, so that novel along with Love in a Cold Climate and Don't Tell Alfred (among others) will be available from tomorrow in much smarter livery*.

    This page gives a flavour of NM's jackets through the ages.

    *Edited to add: designed by Luli Sanchez.

Reading rugby

   

    If you've been following the rugby world cup - and congratulations to New Zealand on an impressive win this afternoon - you might be interested in an excellent novel I wrote about a few years ago.

    The Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones tells the story of the All Blacks' tour of the UK in 1905, and "in this melding of true history and imagination, recreates an unforgettable journey from innocence to celebrity."

    Here's some of what I had to say about it at the time:

" ... Jones has taken real events and imagined the story around them, and the result, though short, has great 'presence' and power. In 1905 a group of young men from all walks of life set sail from New Zealand, bound for Britain. They were the All Blacks, then little known, but their expertise on the rugby pitch soon brought them the sort of celebrity we associate with the present day.

    On the voyage, where the backs honed their passing skills with hard young pumpkins bought in Montevideo, they had no idea that their tour would see them virtually undefeated (only the Welsh would beat them). As they played round the country, the New Zealanders' skill and excellence earned them enormous fame, with which, of course, they had to deal - hence the novel's title.

    The book reads sometimes like an extended diary entry, at others a newsreel; its reportage is mixed with list-style facts, impressions, and details which stand out. It is a very vivid book, and one written with immense sympathy and empathy for its subject. I recommend it thoroughly, as does Mr. C. who read it after me, and you don't need to have an interest in rugby to enjoy it."

    I've read a few of Lloyd Jones' novels but this one is by far my favourite.   

 

The jacket is by Petra Börner, by the way.

Books in stitches

    Penguin have just released their Penguin By Hand collection, six well-loved novels by women, all with 'handcrafted' jackets. Above is Kathryn Stockett's The Help with a beautiful quilt for a jacket; it's by Brenda Riddle, and she talks about the making of it here.

    You can see the other covers in the series on the National Book Tokens website where you can enter a draw to win the set.

    At the excellent Readers and Writers Shop at the New York Public Library this summer I bought the Penguin Threads edition of The Secret Garden

with its deckle edge and embroidered cover by Jillian Tamaki. I was reading Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina's biography Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of "The Secret Garden" at the time, and there are a number of New York connections as Mrs. Burnett had a home there and there is in Central Park a memorial fountain.

    Just by the way, I noted a couple of passages from the biography:

"Throughout her life, Frances was known for five things: her unrelenting literary production, which often drove her to illness; her love of beautiful clothes and domestic surroundings; her inability to remain settles in any one place, or even in one country; her wonderful gardens; and in the second half of her life, compassion and enormous generosity to friends and strangers alike."

"With the best that was in me I have tried to write more happiness into the world."

    Would that every writer could say the same.

Cover comparison

 

    Anne Tyler's new novel A Spool of Blue Thread is just out here and in the US, and the respective covers are above. Which do you prefer, or which one - if you knew nothing about the author - would draw you to pick up the book? My vote is firmly for the American design, that is the one on the right. I would also respond favourably to this summary, again from the US:

    "Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish."

Snow

    Faber have recently published an edition of Walter de la Mare's poem Snow illustrated by Carolina Rabei. I haven't seen the book, but the trailer is delightful enough to make me seek it out.

Under cover

    No apologies for a further brief post on Niall Williams' History of the Rain, but this time regarding the cover.

    It was a proof of the novel I read earlier in the year, but I now have a finished copy and it's the jacket I want to draw attention to because what was not obvious from pictures I'd seen of it was the very clever and effective use of text under the images - there is probably a technical term for that, but seen at different angles and in different lights, lines from Great Expectations 'emerge from the water'.

    It's beautiful, effective, and of course relevant to the book, and is another great design by David Mann.