Conflicted Hearts – The Doughty-Wylie Correspondence – April 2015

Envelope returned to Gertrude, 29th April 1915, after Doughty-Wylie’s death (Bell (Gertrude) Archive)

The 25th April 2015 marks the centenary of the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I, where over 100,000 men lost their live. Amongst them was Lieutenant Colonel Charles Doughty-Wylie, who had already had a distinguished military career in Turkey and was respected both by his own troops and the Turks.

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Doughty-Wylie

Photograph of The Doughty Wylies in Consulate Gardens, May 1907
The Doughty Wylies in Consulate Gardens, May 1907 (Bell (Gertrude) Archive, I_250)

On 26th April Doughty-Wylie’s leadership and complete disregard for his own safety had succeeded in transforming the dispirited remnants of the landing force and in securing the beach at Gallipoli. While commanding the capture of the strategically important hill 141, armed only with a cane out of respect for his former Turkish allies, Doughty-Wylie was shot by a sniper and died instantly. The hill was renamed Fort Doughty-Wylie in his honour and he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross; the highest ranking officer to win the award during the Gallipoli campaign.

His lifelong connections to Turkey proved fatalistic in more ways than one and it is through his correspondence with explorer and archaeologist Gertrude Bell, whom he met there in 1907, that we come to understand him through our Gertrude Bell Papers. Although married to Lilian Doughty-Wylie, following a visit to the Bell family home in August 1913, their friendship became something more intimate. Their correspondence, nearing nearly 100 letters and beginning in that August, reflect on their mutual expertise and love of the Middle East, but moreover their long distance, growing affection for each other. Gertrude repeatedly addresses Charles as ‘Dearest heart of my heart’, and expresses despair on hearing he has been mobilised to active duty on 24th January 1915.

Gertrude Bell

Bell’s fears were well founded. His last letter was written five days before his death and her last two letters were written after. They were returned to Gertrude in the envelope pictured at the top on 29th April 1915 and eventually deposited along with the rest of her collection. Their affair remained a secret outside the Bell family and Doughty-Wylie’s letters to Gertrude did not become publicly available until after his wife’s death in 1960.

As part of our centenary commemorations, Bequest Student David Lowther transcribed all of this correspondence, which is now available on the Gertrude Bell website.

Gertrude Bell is also the subject of a Werner Herzog biopic due to be released this year ‘The Queen of the Desert’, the title of which springs directly from this correspondence. Writing on 28th December 1913, and fearing for the safety of Gertrude in her travels through Baghdad, Charles writes ‘And the desert has you – you and your splendid courage my queen of the desert – and my heart with you…’.

Special Collections were delighted to welcome, in January last year, actor Damian Lewis, who plays Charles Doughty-Wylie in ‘Queen of the Desert’ and researched his role by consulting these fascinating letters between two complex people.

Archivist, Geraldine Hunwick, pictured next to actor, Damian Lewis, in the Special Collections Reading Room.

Major Miss Bell: Gertrude Bell and the First World War

Major Miss Bell: Gertrude Bell and the First World War poster

Early Years

Birth and Heritage

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born on 14 July 1868 at Washington New Hall in County Durham, the daughter of Sir Hugh Bell and Mary Shield, and the granddaughter of eminent industrialist, Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell. Elected Lord Mayor of Newcastle in 1875, Sir Isaac owned several iron, steel and aluminium works and factories throughout the country, and was also the director of the North Eastern Railway and the Forth Bridge Company. His success meant that the Bells were, at the time of Gertrude’s birth, the sixth richest family in England. In 1870, Hugh, Mary and Gertrude left Washington Hall to set up their own home at Red Barns in Redcar. Gertrude’s younger brother Maurice was born here in 1871, but the family’s happiness was short-lived, as Gertrude’s mother Mary died shortly after his birth. In 1876, Sir Hugh married the Parisian Florence Oliffe, to whom Gertrude would gradually become very close.

Education

For a young woman in the late nineteenth century, Gertrude’s education was extremely privileged. From the ages of fifteen to seventeen, she attended the exclusive Queen’s College School for girls in London’s Harley Street, established in 1848, and the first institution in Britain to offer the opportunity for girls to gain academic qualifications. In 1886, shortly before turning eighteen, Gertrude became one of the first women to be admitted to Oxford Universityand, just two years later in June 1888, she became the first woman to gain a first class honours in Modern History from Oxford.

22 Feb 1886 - Extract of a letter from Gertrude Bell to her mother speaking of her time in Oxford.
Extract taken from a letter dated 21st May 1886, from Gertrude Bell to her mother, and speaks of her time in Oxford.

Travel and Mountaineering

Photograph of Gertrude Bell dressed in mountaineering clothing titled ‘Gertrude en Mountaineer. [Trevelyan (Charles Philips) Archive, CPT/PA/1]

In May 1892, Gertrude embarked on her first major voyage to Persia (now Iran), beginning a lifetime of travel that encompassed two round-the-world trips (1897–8 and 1902–3), and numerous journeys to the Middle East, which continued until her death in Baghdad (1926). She was enchanted by the Persian surroundings and people, writing in a letter to her cousin Horace Marshall, ‘Isn’t it all charmingly like the Arabian Nights! but that is the charm of it all and it has none of it changed.’ In December 1897, Gertrude set off with her brother Maurice on the first of two round the world journeys, and from 1902–3 she undertook her second round the world trip with her half-brother Hugo. During this period (1899–1904), Gertrude also became a keen mountaineer, climbing regularly in the Alps, and summiting the Meije, Mont Blanc, and the Matterhorn. In 1901, Gertrude became the first person to summit seven of the nine peaks of the Engelhörner range in Switzerland, and in recognition of her achievement one of the peaks, Gertrudespitze, was named after her.

Archaeology, Photography and Cartography

Archaeological Work

Gertrude’s interest in archaeology was initially sparked on a holiday in Greece (1899), during which she first met David Hogarth – an established archaeologist, and a key figure in Gertrude’s later experiences during the First World War. Her fascination with archaeology grew during her journey to Jerusalem (1900), but was cemented with her journey through the Syrian desert to Asia Minor (1904-5), during which she explored the Binbirkilise, a region in the modern Karaman province in Turkey that is known for its multiple Byzantine church ruins.

Gertrude’s account of her travels from Syria through to Asia Minor was published as the popular travelogue The Desert and the Sown (1907) . She returned to the same region with archaeologist Sir William Ramsay (April 1907), to continue work on inscriptions in the ancient churches that she had first discovered towards the end of her previous visit. Gertrude and Sir William Ramsay published their findings in the co-authored book The Thousand and One Churches (1909). She returned to the East again in 1909 without Ramsay, to explore the Roman and Byzantine fortresses and churches along the banks of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. Her primary objective of this trip was to reach and explore the large castle of Ukhaidir, which lay on the west bank of the river some 120 miles south-west of Baghdad at Ukhaidir, and of which there was no detailed historical or archaeological record in existence. Once she reached the palace, in March 1909, she spent the limited time she had (four days) sketching the huge structure.

Photography

During these journeys, Gertrude became a skilled photographer, documenting her travels and archaeological explorations through her images as well as through her writing. She became a member of the Royal Photographic Society, which enabled her to develop her films professionally. Gertrude carried two cameras with her at all times, and took panoramic shots of entire horizons by combining multiple photographs (see image on left).

The photographs she took during her excavations of various ancient sites, such as image shown the left left, are invaluable to archaeological knowledge and research, particularly because many of the sites have since been looted or vandalised.

Ain Za ‘zu [Tribes-people filling water skins] [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, K/018]

Also significant and fascinating are her photographs of the local people she encountered on her travels, for example (see image on left).

Cartography

As well as archaeological work and excavation, Bell was also interested in mapping the uncharted regions through which she travelled. To aid her in this, she undertook a course in survey methods and map projection at the Royal Geographical Society (1907), and returned to the East to travel a route that curved round the Druze mountains from Damascus to Hail, mapping and surveying the area as she went (1913). Bell’s journey of 1913 has since been highly praised, not least by David Hogarth, former President of the Royal Geographical Society, who, in April 1927, stated to the society that this particular journey of Bell’s ‘was a pioneer venture which not only put on the map a line of wells, before unplaced or unknown, but also cast much new light on the history of the Syrian desert frontiers under Roman, Palnyrene, and Ummayed domination.’

He also gives some hint of the importance of Bell’s work to wartime efforts and military strategies, arguing that:

‘Her information proved of great value during the war, when Hail had ranged itself with our enemy and was menacing our Euphratean flank. Miss Bell became, from 1915 onwards, the interpreter of all reports received from Central Arabia.’

Charles Doughty-Wylie

Konya (Iconium): The Doughty-Wylie’s with servant and dog in Consulate [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, I/246]

During her 1907 archaeological trip to Turkey with Sir William Ramsay to revisit the Binbirkilise, Gertrude met Charles Doughty-Wylie, who would soon become the love of her life. Major Charles Doughty-Wylie of the Royal Welch Fusiliers– known as Dick to his friends – had served in the Boer War, the East Africa campaign of 1903, and in Tientsin during the Chinese rebellion. By the time he met Gertrude, he was the British military consul at Konya in Turkey (see image above), and had married his wife, Lilian, just three years beforehand. Gertrude was invited to stay with the Doughty-Wylie’s at their house in Konya on the final leg of her trip, from where she wrote to her mother, it’s a great alleviation to be staying with the Wylies – they are dears, both of them. I’ve had a very pleasant restful two days. It’s pretty hot but one sits out in their big garden under the trees.’ (see image show below).

The Love Affair

After meeting in 1907, Gertrude and Dick kept in touch, having discovered in each other a mutual love of the culture and history of the Middle East. In the spring of 1912, the two met in London when Dick arrived, without his wife, to take up the position of director-in-chief of the Red Cross relief organisation. During this brief period, Gertrude welcomed Dick into her circle of friends, and regularly took him to the theatre, to music halls, and to dinner. After this, the correspondence between the two intensified both in frequency and in passion. When Gertrude went travelling, she sent Dick full diaries of her journeys, such as the one of her journey to Ha’il. The depth of emotion in Gertrude’s letters to Dick in comparison to those she sent to her family becomes most evident during the First World War. Where she sent her family relatively short, largely factual missives designed, apparently, not to worry them, to Dick she poured out her heart and her fears concerning the conflict. For example, in a letter to her father written on 30 December 1914, when Gertrude was working in the Red Cross Office for the Missing and Wounded in Boulogne, she wrote of ‘the immense sacrifice we had to make to retake the trenches the Indian troops had lost’ (see image below).

In contrast, the language she uses in her letter of the same day to Dick is full of emotion, signifying the closeness between them:

When our men have to relieve them, they must go into trenches which offer them no shelter, nor pay in lieu of their neglect. Its not worth it. Oh my dear, my dear, the horror of it all, & then the shining courage, this devotion – yes, I know the more I talk of it, the more you long to be brave’ (image below).

Gertrude was willing to let only Dick see the pain and sadness she so often felt, and the deep depression that the war triggered within her. Though their affair remained unconsummated, the strength of their love for each other is overwhelmingly evident in their letters, and their relationship is focal point of Werner Herzog’s recent biopic of Gertrude, Queen of the Desert (2015), starring Nicole Kidman as Gertrude, and Damian Lewis as Dick.

Doughty-Wylie’s Death at Gallipoli

26th April 1915 - Daily Chronicle cutting with the headline 'Hero'd Death after Victory Won'.
Newspaper cutting from the Daily Chronicle, 26th April 1915 titled ‘Hero’s Death after Victory Won’. [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, Item 39]

On 26 April 1915, the second day of the Gallipoli campaign, Charles Doughty-Wylie was shot and killed instantly by a sniper during a successful attack organised and led by him and another officer, Captain Garth Walford (who was also killed)

Unaware of his fate, Gertrude continued to write to Dick, only learning of his death when she visited London (June 1915). The letters to her parents during this period are sparse, but their brevity signals her heartbreak, in particular the short note sent on 11 June 1915, days after she had learned of Dick’s death:

‘Dearest Mother. Thank you and Father for your letters. I haven’t anything to say that’s worth, or at any rate worthy of saying, and therefore I don’t write. Your affectionate daughter Gertrude’.

Envelope that Gertrude Bell's letters were returned upon Charles Doughty-Wylie's death
Envelope that Gertrude Bell’s letter were returned to her upon Charles Doughty’Wylie’s death. [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, Item 19]

The image above is to show the envelope that was returned to Gertrude Bell containing her letters to Dick following his death. Dick was buried where he fell at Gallipoli, and towards the end of 1915, a mysterious, veiled female visitor was seen visiting his grave (image shown below), thought to have been the only woman who landed during the Gallipoli campaign. Who this woman was has never been confirmed – possibly it was Dick’s wife, but, equally possible, it was Gertrude.

Photograph of Charles Doughty-Wylie’s grave, buried where he fell at Gallipoli [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, Item 19]

Red Cross in London and Boulougne

Hospital Work at the Outbreak of the First World War

In November 1914, following the outbreak of the First World War, Gertrude began work in a hospital at the house of Lord Onslow in Clandon Park, Surrey, which was filled primarily with wounded Belgian troops. However, much to her dismay, Gertrude’s role was purely administrative, and involved none of the nursing she longed to do. In a letter to her mother on 15 November, she complained:

‘They won’t let me go into the wards to do any nursing on the ground that I shall not be able to keep authority over people who during some hours of the day would be in authority over me. I’m sorry because I should have liked to have had some sort of experience of all kinds and also because I haven’t yet enough to do to fill in my day. But perhaps if I wait patiently I may yet get my way’

However, a mere two days later, Gertrude was sent for by the Red Cross to work in their Boulogne office, helping to trace missing and wounded soldiers, and by 25 November, she was already hard at work in Boulogne.

The Boulogne Red Cross Office

Upon her arrival at the Red Cross Office for Missing and Wounded in Boulogne, Gertrude was faced with a chaotic and ineffectual system for recording the missing and wounded. She took it upon herself to reorganise the entire office, and to put in place new indexing systems, writing to her mother that (8th January 1915),

‘I have made this office – it was fearfully wild before I came (you mustn’t ever say this) and now I’m doing 3 times what was done before and 3 times as accurately’.

Gertrude felt strongly that the Red Cross should be as sensitive as possible when informing families of the loss of their sons, fathers and brothers, and explained this to her mother (12th January 1915):

‘I think the form in which news is conveyed is one of the most important points in our work – you can well understand that it should be when you think of the kind of news we mostly have to convey. And I know at least that when I do it I spare no pains to make it less bitter. There are some stories which I never tell; if I can help it they shall never be known. It’s enough that people should learn that the man is dead without hearing the terrible things that I know.’

London Red Cross Headquarters

In March 1915, Gertrude agreed to move to the headquarters of the London Red Cross in London, to continue her work recording missing and wounded soldiers, and informing their families. Determined to do the job well, Gertrude found herself once more frustrated with the lack of adequate facilities, and most of all with the lack of space, writing to her mother that (20th August 1915):

‘We are once more in difficulties for want of space, even with all the Duke’s first floor. We have taken on another piece of work, at the request (between ourselves) of the Foreign Office. It is the gathering in and tabulating of all information with regard to prison camps in Germany. It is of vital importance that we should have this knowledge properly arranged for it shows us how best to help our prisoners, and who stands in most need of help. But it means more files, more archives, more people working on them, and how to have them I don’t know’.

In October 1915, Gertrude wrote about the vital work of the Red Cross Inquiry Department for The Times (see Item G). By November 1915, however, after less than four months at the British Red Cross Headquarters in London, Gertrude was called to Cairo by the Foreign Office.

Article in the Times Red Cross Supplement, Inquiry Department: Wounded, Missing and Prisoners—Allaying Anxiety at Home, 21st October 1915
Article in the Times Red Cross Supplement, Inquiry Department: Wounded, Missing and Prisoners—Allaying Anxiety at Home, 21st October 1915 [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, Item 22]

Cairo, Delhi & Basra

Cairo

Colonel Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) & Miss Gertrude Bell. [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, PERS/F/001A]

In November 1915, David Hogarth, who had known Gertrude since 1899, enlisted her to come and work at the newly established Arab Bureau in Cairo, a British intelligence organisation dealing with Middle Eastern affairs. T.E. Lawrence – better known today as Lawrence of Arabia – also worked for the Bureau alongside Gertrude, and the two became close friends (see image to the left). Gertrude was employed by the Bureau in Cairo to interpret reports from Central Arabia, as well as to document ‘Arab tribes, their numbers and lineage. It’s a vague and difficult subject which would take a lifetime to do properly. On New Year’s Day (1916), Gertrude wrote to her mother from Cairo reflecting on the past year of war:

My dearest Mother. A second year of war – and I can only wish you, as I wished you last first of January that we may not see another. Never another year like the last, though I wonder if I could choose, whether I would not have it all again, for the wonder it held, and bear the sorrow again‘ (see image below).

Delhi

In late January 1916, Gertrude went to Delhi to meet the Viceroy of India, Lord Charles Hardinge. She was to discuss with him the friction between the British Intelligence Departments of India and Egypt over the ‘Arab Question’, and to communicate the views of her department. Initially unsure of the success of this plan, she wrote to her father,whether much good will come of it I don’t know, but it’s worth trying and at any rate I shall learn a good deal for I hope they will let me dig into their Arab files and see what can be added from them to our knowledge (see image below). In fact, her visit to Delhi was extremely productive, and led to her being enlisted by the Viceroy to Basra in order not only to help with the Intelligence Department there, but also to improve communication between the different departments by acting as liaison between them.

Basra

When Gertrude arrived in Basra in March 1916, she stayed in the home of Sir Percy and Lady Cox until she could find a place of her own. Letters she wrote to her mother talk of her frustration at the impermanent, transient nature of her work. Nevertheless, Gertrude gave her full attention to the number of tasks at hand, which included classifying tribal material, a process in which her own prior knowledge from her travels. Gertrude also had strong views on the political situation in the Middle East, and was frustrated with what she perceived to be Britain’s mishandling of it:

we rushed into the business with our usual disregard for a comprehensive political scheme. We treated Mesop[otamia] as if it were an isolated unit, instead of which it is part of Arabia, its politics indissolubly connected with the great and far reaching
Arab question, which presents indeed, different facets as you regard it from different aspects, and is yet always and always one and the same indivisible block
 (see image below).

Gertrude was appointed to the paid position of Official Correspondent to Cairo (June 1916), and also head of the Iraq branch of the Arab Bureau as an officer of the Indian Expeditionary Force D. She became increasingly influential, providing the Intelligence Department with summaries of recent Arabian history, and writing memoranda about British-Arabian relations, such as, ‘The Nomad Tribes of Arabia’ (pages 16 and 17 are shown below).

The Nomad Tribes of Arabia, Page 16
Page 16 from ‘The Nomad Tribes of Arabia[Bell (Gertrude) Archive]
The Nomad Tribes of Arabia, Page 17
Page 17 from ‘The Nomad Tribes of Arabia[Bell (Gertrude) Archive]

In January 1917, Gertrude was appointed Oriental Secretary by Sir Percy Cox, and continued as head of the Arab Bureau (Iraq). Gertrude left Basra for Baghdad (April 1917), following the British occupation of Baghdad (11 March 1917).

Baghdad & the Aftermath of the First World War

Bell’s Role in Baghdad

Gertrude arrived in Baghdad on 20 April 1917. She was awarded a CBE for her war work in the Middle East (October 1917), though she displayed a characteristic lack of excitement to the news, writing to her father that such awards mean so very little and I never can manage to remember who has got them and who hasn’t. One judges the man by the work one knows he has done and the special label which has been affixed doesn’t make the leats difference. Frequently it’s tosh.’ . Instead, she preferred to focus on her work, which included an appointment as editor of Al Arab, and anonymously authoring a well-received text, The Arab of Mesopotamia.

Later, Gertrude was much amused by reviews of the book that assumed it had been written by a group of ‘practical men’, writing to her mother, ‘Why yes of course I wrote all the Arab of Mesopotamia. I’ve loved the reviews which speak of the practical men who were the anonymous authors etc. It’s fun being practical men isn’t it’(see image below).

Bell’s Belief in Iraq

Gertrude was passionate about the future of Iraq, and wanted to ensure that the best was done for both the country and its people. On 30 October 1918, eleven days before the ceasefire of the First World War, the Turkish government signed the Armistice of Mudros with the Allied Forces. Gertrude’s work intensified in the months following the end of the war. She was heavily involved in decision making regarding Iraq, and while she felt strongly that the British administration needed to act in the best interests of the Iraqi population, she also had her own very clear ideas about what those best interests were. She was, for example, frustrated with calls for an Arab Amir to lead the country instead of Sir Percy Cox as British leader. For Gertrude, the only viable option was British rule in the Middle East:

The East is inclined to lose its head over the promise of settling for itself what is to become of it. It can’t settle for itself really – we out here know that very well – because it might hit on something that certainly wouldn’t imply stable government and that we can’t allow in the interests of universal peace. But it is not going to be an easy job to hold the balance straight when it is disturbed by the gusts of hot air emitted from home in the shape of international declarations. The vast majority here haven’t any views at all; most of the thinking people want our administration, guided by Sir Percy, but there’s a small if vociferous group which thinks they could get on quite well alone and certainly have much more fun individually without us. They would have immense fun for a bit, I don’t doubt it, but it would be a very short bit, abruptly ending in universal anarchy and bloodshed (see an image extract below).

The consequences of such views held by Gertrude and her colleagues, and the extent of British involvement in reshaping the Middle East following the First World War, continue to be powerfully felt today.

Bell’s Role in the Formation of Iraq

In the years following the end of the First World War, the British Government’s attentions turned to determining the lines along which the borders of the new Iraq would be drawn, and Gertrude was heavily involved in the decision making process.

Crowd at the coronation of King Faisal [Bell (Gertrude) Archive, Pers/B/17/O/Robinson]

She attended the Paris Peace Conference as the representative of the Arab Bureau (1919), and later attended the ten-day Cairo Conference (March 1921), which was organised by Winston Churchill with the objective to work towards an independent Arab Government. To that end, Bell was instrumental in the selection of Prince Faisal as the new King of Mesopotamia (crowned July 1921 – see image to the left). While she became a close friend to King Faisal, and worked closely with him for the rest of her life, she found the process of nominating and publicising a potential king strenuous, writing to her father shortly after Faisal’s coronation that you may rely upon one thing – I’ll never engage in creating kings again, it is too great a strain.

Perhaps most famously, however, Bell was central in drawing the borders of Iraq during this period. In a letter to her father (December 1921), she writes, ‘I had a well spent morning at the office making out the Southern desert frontier of the Iraq […] One way and another, I think I’ve been succeeded in compiling a frontier’. After the coronation of King Faisal, the drawing of these borders, and the establishment of the new Iraqi Government, Bell refocused her efforts back into archaeology and historical research, and was appointed the Honorary Director of Antiquities for Iraq (October 1922). Bell initiated the Iraq Museum (October 1923), the first room of which opened in June 1926, just one month short of Bell’s death from an overdose of sleeping pills (12 July 1926). Four years after her death, a commemorative bronze plaque was unveiled by King Faisal, and a bust of Bell was erected to identify the Gertrude Bell principle wing of the Iraq Museum.

Find out More

Transcripts of most of Gertrude Bell’s letters and all of her diaries, together with digital copies of her extensive photograph albums, are available to browse at the dedicated Gertrude Bell website.

No White Flag: Napoleon in Exile – March 2015

contains pieces of red, white and blue silk. An accompanying scrap of paper reads "Pieces of the silk of which the flags that waved over Napoleon were made. St-Helena 19 May 1843"
Pieces of the Tricolore from St. Helena (Clarke (Edwin) General Archive, 2305)

The 20th March 2015 marks the 200th anniversary of the start of Napoleon Bonaparte’s ‘Hundred Days’ marking the period between the Emperor of France’s return to Paris and the eventual second restoration of King Louis XVIII. Having escaped from his enforced exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba the month before, displaying the charismatic leadership that saw him seize control of most of continental Europe, Napoleon built up a loyal following of 200,000 men, but ultimately led them to his most famous defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on 18th June.

One of the more unusual items in Special Collections purports to be a relic from his final exile on St. Helena following this campaign. The Clarke (Edwin) General Archive, built up by local historian and avid collector Edwin Clarke (1919-1996), contains pieces of red, white and blue silk. An accompanying scrap of paper reads “Pieces of the silk of which the flags that waved over Napoleon were made. St-Helena 19 May 1843”. It is made out to a Robert McCormick (1800-1890); the original owner, who was a naval surgeon and naturalist aboard Charles Darwin’s ship HMS Beagle.

Napoleon’s reputation as one of the greatest military leaders and tacticians in history, and the power of the Tricolore as the symbol for French nationalism during their age of revolution, marks this out as a prized item to have for collectors and an artefact of real intrigue in our holdings.

Napoleon returned from Elba, by Karl Stenben, 19th century (Charles de Steuben, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Ship That Sailed To Mars – November 2014

Image of a silhouetted ship sailing across an orange blue background
Image from The Ship That Sailed To Mars (London: George G. Harrap, 1923) (20th Century Collection, 20th C. Coll 823.912 TIM)

To mark the 50th anniversary this month of NASA’s first successful mission to Mars, Special Collections brings you its very own Mars mission in the fantasy and vintage Science Fiction work, The Ship That Sailed To Mars.

The book is the work of William Mitcheson Timlin (1892 – 1943). Timlin was born in Ashington, Northumberland, the son of a colliery foreman. He attended Morpeth Grammar School where he showed talent for drawing, and received a scholarship to the School of Art at Armstrong College in Newcastle (later to form part of Newcastle University). In 1912, he moved to South Africa where he completed his training in Art and Architecture and remained for the rest of his life, forging a successful career for himself as an architect, illustrator and author.

The Ship That Sailed To Mars was published in England in 1923 in an edition of only two-thousand copies. Originally conceived by Timlin as a work to entertain his young son, it carries forty-eight striking watercolour plates, alternating with forty-eight pages of Timlin’s own handsome calligraphic text; when Timlin sent the book to the London-based publishers, George Harrap, they were sufficiently impressed that they decided to print the book just as it appeared, without any typesetting.

Page titled 'The Meteor' from 'The Ship that Sailed to Mars'
Page from The Ship that Sailed to Mars (20th Century Collection,
20th C. Coll 823.912 TIM
)

The book’s fantastical, whimsical and stylised illustrations display strong influences of fellow Twentieth Century illustrators such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and William Heath Robinson. The Dictionary of Twentieth Century British Book Illustrators describes it as a masterpiece and “the most original and beautiful children’s book of the 1920s”.

The story is that of an Old Man who dreams of sailing to Mars “by way of the Moon and the more friendly planets.” He designs and builds a ship with the help of elves and fairies, and journeys to “the tiny Orb that was the Wonder World of Mars”, encountering all manner of creatures and adventures along the way.

‘Bewickish Prints’ in the Philip Robinson Library – October 2014

Flyer for the Newcastle Imprint Club talk for October 1994
Flyer for the Newcastle Imprint Club talk for October 1994.

Professor Peter Isaac was Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Newcastle. He had a passion for the history of printing and the book trade in England and after he retired as Head of Department in 1983, he devoted himself to studying aspects of the book: writing books and articles, and stimulating others to do the same.

In Newcastle, Professor Isaac co-founded the Newcastle Imprint Club in 1963, a meeting point for anyone interested in print, design, and books. The Club’s first meeting took place in Newcastle University’s Barras Bridge Refectory, with an informal dinner and a talk, entitled ‘Briefing the Print Designer’. The Club welcomed nationally- and internationally-respected figures to speak at its quarterly talks, latterly in the Philip Robinson Library at Newcastle University, and Durham University’s Palace Green Library. These could include managers of large commercial print firms, printers from private presses, illustrators, authors, poets, and lecturers with an interest in the print and book trades.

When Professor Isaac died in 2002, his wife Marjorie donated 19 boxes of her husband’s correspondence, working papers, printing keepsakes, type specimens, and books, to Special Collections. The Peter Isaac Collection is, as yet, uncatalogued but there is strong emphasis on private presses and print. There are notes and typescripts relating to Professor Isaac’s book on Alnwick printer William Davison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), and his ongoing research into Newcastle printer and typographer William Bulmer (1757-1830).

Among the Imprint Club memorabilia in the Isaac Collection is this flyer. It was produced almost exactly twenty years ago to advertise the 25 October 1994 talk, ‘Impressions of Bewick’, in the Robinson Library.

Thomas Bewick, born in Cherryburn, Northumberland, in 1753, had a hug influence on the history of wood engraving. The Imprint Club organised many talks by wood engravers over its thirty-odd-year existence, including a talk by world-renowned Bewick expert Iain Bain in 1972. Bewick’s work was much-copied, resulting in the proliferation of ‘Bewickish’ prints during the nineteenth century.

The ‘Bewickish work’ was printed by artist Alex McLaren on his 1852 Albion hand press in the basement of his home. The woodblocks – most certainly not only the work of Bewick – came from the collections of Peter Isaac and Ron Beresford, a member of the Imprint Club. A portfolio of the prints, with notes on the printing and provenance, was assembled and, in the manner of private press keepsakes, given gratis to Imprint Club members after the talk. Our 20th Century Collection has one of these portfolios. In his essay, Ron Beresford writes that he obtained his blocks – which possibly came from William Davison’s print shop – from a Mr Meyer of Alnwick, who had rescued them from a bonfire.

The ‘Impressions of Bewick‘ portfolio showing some of the Bewickish prints (20th Century Collection, 20th C. Coll. 761.2 MCL)

Cornish and Chaplin’s Spennymoor Settlement – August 2014

Christmas card with message "A happy xmas Sid, Rene, and family from Norman, Sarah and family" which includes a reproduction of painting 'Church Street, Low Spennymoor' by Norman Cornish
Christmas card with message “A happy xmas Sid, Rene, and family from Norman, Sarah and family” which includes a reproduction of painting ‘Church Street, Low Spennymoor’ by Norman Cornish (Chaplin (Sid) Archive, SC/RC/3/7)

The last of the famous “Pitman Painters”, Norman Cornish, died on the 1st August aged 94. Hailing from Spennymoor, County Durham, he worked as a miner at the Dean and Chapter Colliery in Ferryhill until 1966 when he pursued a career as an artist full-time. He is best known for painting the mining village culture found in the North East, expertly capturing the characters and essence of the area.

Cornish was also a long standing member of the Spennymoor Settlement, a community centre serving the South Durham coalfield area. Established in 1930 as a reaction to the effects of the economic depression, it’s declared objectives were “To encourage tolerant neighbourliness and voluntary social services and give its members opportunities for increasing their knowledge, widening their interests, and cultivating their creative powers in a friendly atmosphere”. This was achieved partly through the provision of classes and talks on varied subjects, including cobbling, painting and sketching, sewing, woodwork, and drama.

The Spennymoor Settlement was also known as the Pitman Academy as it nurtured the talents of many prominent North-East art individuals whose roots were in mining, including those of writer Sid Chaplin. Chaplin from Shildon, Co. Durham, also worked at the Dean and Chapter Colliery and was involved with the Spennymoor Settlement, meaning his path invariably crossed with that of Norman Cornish. Various records within the Chaplin (Sid) Archive held at the Newcastle University Special Collections and Archives, relate to the Spennymoor settlement. These include correspondence during Sid’s time as the honorary secretary, a programme for the Festival of Art 1949, and the 21st Birthday Commemorative magazine from 1951 that includes short story “The Bicycle against the wall” by Sid Chaplin, and an image of a portrait of Sid Chaplin by Norman Cornish.

The Outbreak of World War I: “Charlie” Resigns – July 2014

Photograph of Charles Philips Trevelyan & Molly Trevelyan
Photograph of Charles Philips Trevelyan and Molly Trevelyan.

The 28th June marked the centenary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. This became known as the ‘shot heard round the world’ because of the diplomatic crisis it caused between Britain, Germany, and Russia, leading to the outbreak of World War I.

Such hostilities were not universally welcome, especially amongst the more radical elements of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s Liberal party. Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan (1870 – 1958), was one such dissenter, who felt Britain’s declaration of war was wholly unjustified.

In her diary, contained within our Trevelyan Papers, his wife Mary “Molly” Katharine Trevelyan (1881 – 1966) explains:

EXTRACT 1

Extract from Molly Treveylan's diary "Towards the end of July, an Austrian Grand Duke, on a visit to Servia, had been murdered. Austria demanded an apology, Servia would not give it. On July 28th Austria declared war on Servia. Russia at once joined in as Servia's ally, and Germany as Austria's"
Extract from personal diary of Molly Trevelyan, April 22nd 1912 – December 28 1914 (Trevelyan (Charles Philips, CPT/2/1/14)

TranscriptionTowards the end of July, an Austrian Grand Duke, on a visit to Servia, had been murdered. Austria demanded an apology, Servia would not give it. On July 28th Austria declared war on Servia. Russia at once joined in as Servia’s ally, and Germany as Austria’s.

Molly goes on to detail Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir Edward Grey’s now much derided lack of clear communication towards Germany. She states on two occasions when asked whether Britain would act if Belgium was invaded or France was engaged, he merely replied cryptically “we must keep our hands free.” Molly also touches on the view held by many Liberal radicals that Grey “had in secret committed himself so deeply to France, in what was practically an alliance, that in honour he could do no less than declare war on Germany.”

Indeed, her husband was chief amongst this opposition. She writes:

EXTRACT 2

Extract from Molly Trevelyan's personal diary "I had expected him home on Sat. Aug. 1st but he telegraphed to say the state of affairs kept him in London. He and Norman Angell had formed a Neutrality C'tee and were trying to get people together to support their views. On Aug 5, Wednesday, we heard that war had been declared at midnight. That same day Charlie resigned"
Extract from personal diary of Molly Trevelyan, April 22nd 1912 – December 28 1914 (Trevelyan (Charles Philips, CPT/2/1/14)

TranscriptionI had expected him home on Sat. Aug. 1st but he telegraphed to say the state of affairs kept him in London. He and Norman Angell had formed a Neutrality C’tee and were trying to get people together to support their views. On Aug 5, Wednesday, we heard that war had been declared at midnight. That same day Charlie resigned.

Sir Charles’ crisis of conscience led to widespread hostility from his contemporaries, including the press, his constituents, and members of his own family. He lost his place in parliament in the 1918 election and spent 4 years in the political wilderness. He was vindicated only amongst likeminded radicals and through the support and comfort of his wife Molly and the affairs of their estate at Wallington.

Sir Joseph Swan – A Light that Never Goes Out – June 2014

Sir Joseph Swan's, Hughes Medal (left) and Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (right).
Sir Joseph Swan’s, Hughes Medal (left) and Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur (right).

27 May 2014 marked the centenary of the death of Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914), Sunderland-born scientist, pioneer, and inventor of early electric light bulbs, photographic processes, and synthetic fibres.

Swan was very much a local man working on Grey Street Newcastle for a firm of manufacturing chemists Mawson, Swan and Morgan, and going on to live at Low Fell in Gateshead. It was here, in a large conservatory, that Swan conducted many of the experiments that led to his creation of the first partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent light bulb in 1850.

Unsatisfied with the lamps short lifespan and inefficiency, Swan continued to work on his invention until he finally presented it to the public on 3 February 1879 when over seven hundred people viewed it in action at the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle. This time, the lamp used a carbonized thread and a better vacuum, but Swan improved on it again with ‘parchmentised thread’ before he began to install his invention in homes across England. His own house was the world’s first to have electric lighting installed.

By 1881, the Savoy Theatre in London (the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electric light) and both the House of Commons and the British Museum were illuminated using Swan bulbs. In 1883, Swan went into business with Thomas Edison, famed for similar but independent developments in electric lighting, to form Edison and Swan United Electric, producing lights commercially.

Having exhibited the electric light bulb in Paris in 1881, Swan was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, the highest decoration in France. In 1904, he became only the third person to receive the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal. He was also honoured locally with the Freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne, only a few months before his death in 1914.

These original honours (pictured above), donated by his descendants, are now on permanent display in the Special Collections Reading Room on level 1 of the Philip Robinson Library.

Books We Forgot to Remember: the radical tradition in British children’s literature of the early twentieth century

A student-curated exhibition based on work for a module on Radical Children’s Literature of the Early Twentieth Century. Curated by Rebecca Goor and Sam Summers, June 2014.

Photograph of a member of the SA throws confiscated books into the bonfire during the public burning of "un-German" books on the Opernplatz in Berlin.
A member of the SA throws confiscated books into the bonfire during the public burning of “un-German” books on the Opernplatz in Berlin (image not from Newcastle University Library Special Collections and Archives)

The period between 1900 and 1949 is one curiously overlooked when it comes to the history of children’s literature. It has been viewed as ‘an age of brass between two of gold’, referring to the two so-called golden ages of Victorian children’s literature that began with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and post World War II writing by figures such as Alan Garner, William Mayne, Rosemary Sutcliff and Mary Norton. Books from this period have drawn criticism for their apparent ignorance of the changes occurring in the world around them, and for refusing to widen their focus beyond carefree middle-class children at a time when the struggles of the working class were increasingly a concern.

The writers and illustrators featured in this exhibition, however, were responsible for texts which, while not as well-known as the more conservative works of the period, tackled controversial themes, endorsed radical political views and thrived on aesthetic innovation.

Reproduction of a tipped-in colour plate by Gwynedd M. Hudson, showing Alice with the Caterpillar sat on a toadstool.
Reproduction of a tipped-in colour plate by Gwynedd M. Hudson from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922) [20th Century Collection, 20th C. Coll 823.8 CAR]

The early twentieth century was a time of landmark political, military and social events which changed both Britain and the world at large forever. Two world wars, the depression, and the end of empire dislodged the United Kingdom from its seat of global power, and confronted the public with an acute awareness of the horrors humankind was capable of inflicting upon itself. At the same time, left-wing political ideals were gaining momentum with both the advent of communism in Russia and the steady rise of socialism in Britain.

In the wake of these large-scale cultural shifts, radical authors created a body of literature which challenged earlier notions of what a children’s book could be. They depicted a more diverse range of characters than the typical white, middle-class children of their predecessors, while also engaging their readers politically. Their books were more socially aware than those that had come before, challenging authority and questioning the dominant views of the day rather than deferring to them. Meanwhile, writers and illustrators whose work was not as thematically radical as some of their contemporaries were nonetheless creating aesthetically innovative books, with some incorporating modernist techniques into their writing and others displaying the influence of avant-garde movements in their artwork. The goal of many of these creators was to provoke change, by encouraging young readers to act on the ideas raised in their books to secure the future of the next generation of leaders and artists.

This exhibition highlights work from across the spectrum of radical children’s literature. It is divided into four sections: ‘Reacting to War’, ‘The Soviet Effect’, ‘Real Lives’ and ‘Artistic Innovation’. The examples are a reminder that across this time of cultural upheaval some children’s writers and illustrators were helping to prepare young readers to help bring about what they believed would be a more just, equitable, healthy and rewarding world for all.

Reacting to war

During the fifty year time period that this exhibition covers, war played a huge part in changing the social and political landscape not only in Britain but worldwide. Whilst the First World War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945) were undoubtedly the largest conflicts during this period, other crises such as the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) contributed to the atmosphere of political instability. The relationship between war and Western children’s literature is often remembered as one that saw books inspire young readers to support the war effort by presenting life in the military as heroic and adventurous. However, as this exhibition aims to show, there were alternative works of children’s fiction between 1900 and 1949 that treated child readers as agents of political change, rather than as cogs in the war machine.

Many of the radical texts of this period were influenced by Socialist ideas, but other pacifist publications included those circulated by the religious group the Quakers and by progressive schools that believed in empowering children by inspiring leadership skills and independent thought. Whilst the left-wing literature movement in Britain was not strictly organised and consisted of various strands, some publications had significant followings; The Left Book Club, created by Socialist publisher Victor Gollancz, had a readership of 20,000 in 1936, increasing to 57,000 in 1939. The Junior Left Book Club encouraged children to read Socialist literature, demonstrating the power that reading held in inspiring new ideas in the younger generation.

The four texts in this section include a non-fictional pamphlet, illustrated stories and even a rule-book for toy war games, demonstrating the range of opposition to militaristic children’s literature from this period, much of which has been forgotten in history. The earliest text of the collection, Little Wars (1913) by H.G. Wells, draws upon the child’s instinct to play to oppose militaristic values and expose the horrors of war. 20 Years After (1934) is a non-fictional pamphlet, providing a realistic depiction of the death and destruction caused by war, helping to counteract heroic, militaristic children’s stories that sentimentalise war.

The collection also features two American publications, which show that anti-war messages were being communicated in America as well as in Britain. Johnny Get Your Gun (1936), the title of which plays upon the call often used in battle to rally troops, exposes the human costs of war through the paralysation of its soldier protagonist. The Story of Ferdinand (1936) carries a similar pacifist message, and despite its specific relevance to the Spanish Civil War, it extols opposition to fascism, which led to the book being burned by the Nazis. The range of texts in this exhibition exemplify the work of radical writers during this period that opposed the use of children’s literature for wartime propaganda, informing child readers about the horrors of war and presenting pacifism as a heroic alternative to militarisation.

Putting a stop to war games

Little Wars (first published 1913) by H.G. Wells is a set of rules for a table-top war game for children. Often considered the first popular handbook for war gaming in the English language, it can be said to have prefigured the later rise in miniature gaming and role-play, and even more recent developments in digital military games such as Call of Duty. The game includes rules for deployment, combat, movement and objectives, each of which is described in detail. The book’s full title is Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books. Whilst this title reveals the book to be a product of its time in terms of gender stereotypes, Little Wars was radical during the time of its production due to its pacifist stance and universal message.

Front cover of Little Wars.
Front cover of Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundres and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girls who likes ‘boys’ games and books. [Butler (Joan) Collection, Butler 793 WEL]

The book discusses the ‘death’ and ‘blood’ involved in warfare, but it does so as a way of opposing large-scale war in the real world. Wells distinguishes between the make-believe of the game and the reality of warfare asking, ‘How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing?’ He capitalises on children’s instinct to play and compete in order to deliver his pacifist message, though the wide age range established in the full title suggests that these lessons were addressed to an adult audience.

H.G. Wells was an outspoken socialist and sympathetic to pacifist views, and this is reflected in much of his work for both adults and children. Paradoxically, Wells eventually supported British involvement in the First World War on the grounds that it

would be “The War That Will End War”. In other words, he felt it was necessary to resolve a range of tensions and areas of competition in order to create long-lasting peace and unity.

Wells’ socialist outlook as well as his then opposition to war is apparent in Little Wars. The game instructs players to use inexpensive materials, meaning that the book is suitable for children from all social and economic backgrounds. Little Wars, along with its predecessor Floor Games (1911), which similarly provided cheap role-playing games for boys and girls, widened the audience for children’s literature and toys, the majority of which still had a strong middle-class focus during the early twentieth-century. The universal message of the text suggests that in order to overcome militaristic and imperialistic values, people of all social classes must work together to create a more just society.

Like other texts in this section, Little Wars does not construct war as heroic but rather highlights the gore and suffering caused by warfare. Wells combines playful storytelling, hands-on play and a serious message to provide young boys (and possibly girls) with an opportunity to satisfy their competitive streaks without being manipulated into sacrificing themselves to the true horrors of war. Considered in hindsight alongside the horrific trench warfare that was to begin a year after the publication of Little Wars, the text is poignant in its attempt to educate potential soldiers about the truth behind the fictionalisation of war.

Image of H.G. Wells playing with an indoor war game.
‘H.G. Wells playing with an indoor war game’ from Illustrated London News, January 1913 [19th Century Collection, 19th C. Coll 030 ILL]

This image (above) was taken from a news article about the book with the caption ‘H.G. Wells, the English novelist, playing an indoor war game’. It shows Wells, a famous and respected literary figure, reduced to the level of his juvenile readers, reflecting his desire to educate them on their own terms.

Exposing the truth behind World War I

20 Years After! (London: Marston Printing Co., 1934) is a left-wing propagandist pamphlet written twenty years after the start of World War I and in the shadow of what was to become World War II. It exposes the largely unreported aspects of the first global conflict and rails against the injustice of the capitalist system in which a few individuals profited from the war to the detriment of the suffering masses. Socialist in outlook, the pamphlet was produced by the Youth Council of the British Anti-War Movement and distributed amongst left-wing groups with the aim of encouraging adolescent readers to oppose future war and fight against fascism.        

The pamphlet attempts to engage young readers politically with its critiques of capitalism and fascism. It claims to expose ‘the real story’ of war and suggests the British Government is concealing the truth. Using facts and statistics to verify its claims, it tells a story of capitalists benefitting from industries facilitated by war whilst thousands lost their lives and suffered. These facts are simple to read, making the pamphlet accessible to the youth of all social classes, even those who were not experienced readers. Furthermore, 20 Years After! includes horrific photographic images that document the realities of war. One photograph features the mutilated face of a soldier and so underlines the shocking physical suffering and life-time disfigurement caused by the war. As a whole it suggests that readers would do better to band against war than to enlist.

The pamphlet gives the example of the USSR and its First Five-Year Plan as a way to counter war and fascism. Readers are told that the USSR has happier workers because of the increase in wages and investment in farming and therefore has no need for war. The implication is that following the USSR’s example would encourage peace. Furthermore, opposing fascism and war is portrayed as an international effort, through examples of other foreign congresses such as the Paris Youth conference in 1933. The pamphlet encourages British youths to become part of a worldwide pacifist movement, and urges them to understand that young people can influence the future of the world.

The pamphlet was published in 1934 and sold prior to the Sheffield Youth Congress with the aim of encouraging young people to join the anti-war movement. The realistic image of the tank reflects the aim of the pamphlet to expose the ‘real’ story and human costs of war.

The final page of the 20 Years After pamphlet invites child readers to become actively involved in pacifism by signing up to the anti-war movement. This approach is reflected in other radical children’s literature, in which the child is treated as an agent of change rather than a vessel for adult ideas.

Peace in the face of Fascism

Written in less than an hour by American author Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson, The Story of Ferdinand (1936) remains one of the world’s best-loved children’s books. Before beginning his career as a children’s author – during which he wrote over 40 books – Leaf worked as a secondary school teacher in schools that were part of a progressive, student-centred form of education that encouraged leadership skills and independent thinking. Later, Leaf gave ‘Chalk Talks’ in schools across America, including lectures about world peace. Of all his activities it was this work of children’s fiction that provided the strongest and most enduring pacifist message. 

Front cover of The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.
Front cover of Leaf, Munro. The Story of Ferdinand. (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1936)

At a time when much children’s literature served as war propaganda, The Story of Ferdinand features Ferdinand, a bull who refuses to fight in the bull ring. Although written during the escalating violence that lead to the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939), Leaf’s pacifist message has a more universal significance and was burned by the Nazis due to its anti-fascist sentiments. The story’s peaceful yet rebellious hero, Ferdinand, prefers to sit alone and smell flowers rather than fight with his fellow bulls. When he sits on a bee however, Ferdinand startled reaction is mistaken for aggression and his is taken to Madrid to be the star of the bull ring. The illustration of the bull-ring parade, with its flags and music, clearly references the collective passions associated with war rallies.  Ferdinand challenges militaristic and masculine values when he refuses to fight in the ring, angering the Matador, whose thirst for blood is caricatured. Ferdinand’s gentle nature prevails, and at the end of the book he is able to return to his mother, and the flowers that he loves. Munro Leaf’s use of a bull – typically a more violent animal than those usually featuring in less radical children’s fiction – creates a challenge to authority that encourages child readers to obey their own instincts rather than blindly follow wartime hysteria.

Robert Lawson’s illustrations are perhaps surprising for a children’s book, as the realistic black-and-white images lack the sentimentality associated with much children’s literature. In particular, the use of vultures creates a motif of death throughout the story that is not discussed in the textual content. The images provide greater depth to the narrative, whilst the discussion of such serious issues within children’s literature does not patronise children or shield them from reality. This radical text remains popular worldwide due to its universal celebration of peace and individuality.

The red front cover provides the only use of colour in this otherwise black and white text. In the later Disney adaptation of The Story of Ferdinand, the use of red survived, helping the cover to achieve international status as a pacifist symbol.

Pages from The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf.
Pages from Leaf, Munro. The Story of Ferdinand. (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1936)

This image (above) exemplifies the wider motif of vultures throughout the text: something that is not discussed in the actual words of the story. Placing Ferdinand next to a height chart, with a vulture closely watching, explores the theme of death in a franker way than more conservative children’s literature. It is perhaps significant that Ferdinand avoids the final stage of death by refusing to fight in a military-like way.

Pushing past the propaganda

Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written for children over the age of 12 in 1938 when the approach of World War II was giving rise to widespread propaganda designed to persuade young men to enlist to fight for their country. The novel contrasts dramatically with more traditional pro-war children’s literature that has for long been associated with youthful enlistment. Dalton Trumbo’s radical – and powerful – novel questions the convention that soldiers are fighting for freedom. It also questions related constructions of liberty and the tendency to characterise the First World War as a game of ‘follow the leader’.

Front cover of Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.
Front cover of Trumbo, Dalton. Johnny Got His Gun. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Williams, 1938)

Johnny was radical as it challenged established ways of depicting war and military service and so undermined the conventions of traditional war stories for children. In such books men (and boys) who went to war were put on a pedestal and treated as heroic figures. Trumbo, however, opposes this image of a valiant figure fighting the enemy and instead confronts readers with the figure of Joe Bonham, who has had his arms and legs amputated and his face blown off on a WWI battlefield. His helplessness is reminiscent of a baby’s vulnerability, which contrasts with the strong and powerful image of men as depicted on propagandist posters. Trumbo wanted to represent the realities and horrors of war to prevent his young readers blindly following the previous generation to the front line. Like WWI, which saw many under age youths become soldiers, the novel blurs the division between childhood and adulthood by exposing young readers to the grim realities of war. As readers of this novel, they are treated as socially significant and rational beings, capable of deciding whether or not to join the war effort on their own.

Trumbo is far from subtle in his suggestion that fighting for freedom is a lost cause. Joe is anything but free in the novel, epitomising the ultimate enslaved man as he is trapped within his own body. He is unable to talk, walk, or even move; his injuries have made his body as helpless as a baby’s but he has the frustrated mind of a grown man. Joe’s injuries are extreme because Joe embodies the collective injuries of all of the soldiers. Surviving the war with injuries is presented as a fate worse than death. This highlights Trumbo’s views on the destructiveness of war. A soldier might never come home, or might come home injured, but neither situation conforms to the glamorised fantasy of war provided by propaganda.Throughout the text Trumbo contrasts the fantasy of war with the harsh reality of its horrors. Joe had a family and a lover waiting for him at home, as did so many other soldiers. There is no home or future for him on his return. This moving way of illustrating the consequences of war for many soldiers drives home the extent to which large numbers of people were devastated by the terrors and tragedy wreaked by World War I. In conveying his opposition to war in its every facet so unflinchingly, Trumbo breaks the conventions of war stories and encourages readers to think about the realities of war rather than accepting the myths generated around it.

The simplicity of the front cover reflects the book’s frank treatment of the injuries sustained by soldiers at war. Unlike government propaganda released around the time of the book’s publication in 1938, there are no images of heroic men to pressurise readers into sacrificing themselves to the war effort.

The Soviet effect

Between the two world wars, those involved in creating radical children’s literature were keen to engage young readers with the vast social experiment that was taking place in Soviet Russia. If it succeeded they believed the new social model being piloted there would offer a cure for the booms, busts and inequities of capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy that had disenfranchised and oppressed huge numbers of people around the world, and which many blamed for the series of wars that had punctuated the first decades of the twentieth century.  Radical children’s books treated events in the USSR as “The most exciting adventure in the history of the world” (An Outline for Boys and Girls and Their Parents, 1932) and depicted the emerging Soviet society as an ideal world in the making where children, childhood and youth were valued and given important roles.

There were two principal ways in which radical children’s books introduced young readers to images of the Soviet Union. The first was through novels and fictionalised travel-writing by Anglo-American writers; the second was by translating and publishing some of the highly innovative picturebooks that had been published in the USSR.  The six texts in this section represent both forms. Geoffrey Trease’s Red Comet: A tale of travel in the U.S.S.R. (1936) was written during a five-month residency in that country. Like Marjorie Fischer’s Palaces on Monday (1936), Trease’s novel features two children from the Depression-era West who have the opportunity to travel across the USSR. They visit parks of recreation and culture with their impressive facilities for children and admire the new ways of working and organising society. Both books are particularly concerned to tell their young readers about the egalitarian nature of Soviet society: divisions based on wealth, class, sex, race, ethnicity and even age are shown to be things of the past. Pearl Binder’s Russian Families (1942) also features many different aspects of the Soviet Union and gives an optimistic vision of how those who had previously been oppressed – peasants, women, and ethnic minorities – are thriving and contributing to their new nation.

Picturebooks from the Soviet Union were remarkable for their stylistic and artistic innovation. Most of those translated for British children were written by Samuil Marshak and illustrated by Vladimir Lebedev. Yesterday and Today (1925) develops one of the themes most popular with the Soviet authorities. It compares the old-fashioned way Soviet citizens were living just a short time ago with the modern lifestyles achieved under the First Five-Year Plan. The Circus (1925), presented as a series of posters featuring different acts and artists, emphasises the dynamic and internationalist ethos of Soviet society. The influence of these books in Britain is evident in the last book in the section, Peggy Hart’s The Magic of Coal (1945).

Although disillusion with the Soviet Union set in as information about the shortages, famines, show trials and purges of the Stalin years became known, these books recall a time when radical children’s books in Britain were invigorated by both the aspirations of Soviet society and the artistically exciting children’s books created during the first years of the Soviet regime.

Bringing Soviet styles to Britain

This 1945 Puffin picture book entitled The Magic of Coal is an example of a wave of non-fiction picture books which entered the UK market for children’s literature in the 1940s, thanks to the efforts of Noel Carrington and Penguin Books’s Allen Lane. Influenced by the new Soviet ‘production books’ (books that told young readers about how everyday items are made and celebrated workers), these texts concentrated on themes such as farming, mining and other industries. Production books were part of the offical Soviet strategy to educate children about the advantages of their new communist society and the valued place of workers in it; children were central to Soviet policy and there are many examples of children’s literature being used to establish a public base for policies and plans. The Magic of Coal is the British equivalent of a Soviet production book in its focus on how things are made, its heroic treatment of miners, and its representation of a modern society in which social divisions are being eradicated.

Front cover of The Magic of Coal, showing a coal miner holding a shovel with his tattoo of St. George defeating the dragon on his chest.
Front cover of Hart, Peggy M. The Magic of Coal

The Magic of Coal introduces readers to the admirably technical and industrious world of coal mining. It not only tells how coal is produced but makes miners emblems of Britain – note the tatoo depicting St. George and the Dragon on the chest of the miner who appears on the cover. In doing so, the text and its illustrations point towards the political goal of making Britain a less class-riven, more equal society. To this end the book focusses on the production process rather than around any one character. Each role within the mine is shown through illustrations and accompanying text, implying that there is something for everybody. Every individual has a skill set to offer in the production of coal and is a valuable cog in the machinery of the mine. A sense of a community at work is created, and when combined with impressionist illustrations of tiny black figures and miners whose faces are blurred or have their backs to the reader, this sense of community solidifies into the socialist theory of collectivism. There are no visible owners or bosses and so it seems that the miners are working not in the service of capitalism but independently, for the benefit of the nation.

Improvements to working conditions also feature in this book which represents mining as a clean, modern, technologically advanced industry. The text informs the reader that the miners can attend the ‘pitbaths’ after work and rather show miners not begrmed with coal but looking rather like an office worker. Mention is also made of miners’ lives outside of work which include membership of societies, theatre visits and higher education. The Story of Coal, then, shows miners as lynchpins in a coal-fueled modern society, but also as respectable citizens with good standards of living and a thirst for culture. Miners are as important as the ‘treasure’ they dig up.

Plain front cover of Red Comet: A tale of travel in the U.S.S.R.
Front cover of Trease, Geoffrey. Red Comet: A tale of travel in the U.S.S.R. (London: Martin Lawrence, 1937)

The battered state of the copy of Red Comet: A tale of travel in the U.S.S.R., which is missing its dust jacket, is typical. Few copies survive of either the 1936 edition published in the Soviet Union by the Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers or the UK and US editions that appeared the following year. The fact that it was first published in the Soviet Union no doubt contributed to the positive image of that country it paints.

Front cover of Palaces on Monday.
Front cover of Fischer, Marjorie. Palaces on Monday. (Harmondsworth: Puffin, 1944)

First published in the UK in 1937, the image here is of the Palaces on Monday, Puffin edition published towards the end of the Second World War. It shows the three children with their backs to readers as they stare at the approaching coast of the country which represents their future. While the book emphasises Soviet building programmes the skyline shows tradition onion-shaped domes and tall spires.

Pages from Russian Families, showing an illustration of a Russian family.
Pages from Binder, Pearl. Russian Families. (London: A & C Black, 1942)

Pearl Binder was closely tied to the Soviet Union and travelled there extensively. The illustrations in Russian Families, which she drew herself, give a sense of cheerful energy that matches her portrait of the country and its people.

Front cover of Yesterday and Today.
Front cover of Marshak, Samuil. Yesterday and Today. Illus, Vladimir Lebedev. Trans. Stephen Capus. (London: Tate, 2013)

The themes of this popular Yesterday and Today book capture the spirit of post-Revolutionary Russia. It celebrates ‘today’ in the form of the modern world while remembering the efforts of those who lived in the more difficult time represented as ‘yesterday’. The change is symbolised by the clothing and outdated objects of yesterday, drawn in black and white to contrast with the bright colours and modern equipment of today.

Front cover of The Circus and other Stories showing an illustration of a circus elephant.
Front cover of Marshak, Samuil. The Circus. Illus, Vladimir Lebedev. Trans. Stephen Capus. (London: Tate, 2013)

The images in The Circus book take the form of circus posters. Text and images both emphasise the international nature of the circus, with acts from many countries and people of different races and ethnicities all contributing to the performance.

Real lives

The first half of the twentieth-century is often considered to be a period of ‘retreatism’ in terms of children’s literature, and it is certainly the case that much mainstream children’s literature did maintain the status quo through its portrayal of white, middle-class families living comfortable lives unaffected by conflict or financial exigency. Radical texts, by contrast, acknowledged alternative ways of living and exposed child readers to poverty and the changing political landscape in Britain.

The period that this exhibition covers saw the emergence of the British welfare state, beginning with a basic National Health Service and Unemployment Insurance. The 1942 Beveridge Report, an enquiry into the best way to provide welfare in Britain, concluded that security should be provided for British people ‘from cradle to grave’. Legislation based on the report included The Butler Act of 1944, which referred to education, the 1945 Family Allowance Act and the 1948 National Health Act. Although social problems remained, these policies recognised the need to support working-class families and those living in poverty.

The earlier of the two texts in this section, The Children Who Lived in a Barn (1938), was written before the Beveridge Report and it demonstrates the need for increased governmental support through the analogy of incapable parents and adults who fail to provide for the children in the text. Child characters, on the other hand, are depicted as intelligent and self-sufficient. They show awareness of real-life issues such as money management, fear of eviction and loss of parents. By creating independent child characters, Eleanor Graham (the first editor of Puffin Books) foregrounds the role of the children’s writer as a figure that inspires children to engage with social problems and different ways of living, rather than one that aims to shield young readers from reality.

Whilst The Children Who Lived in a Barn exposes child readers to different characters than the middle-class protagonists often portrayed in children’s literature, Come In (1946) by Olive Dehn subtly raises questions about middle-class life and the consumer trend to build ‘ideal homes’. When asked to give an account of her day by her husband, who doesn’t understand why she complains about her life, Mrs Markham – a suburban housewife – tells a story of rigid routine, stress and dissatisfaction. Unlike in much children’s fiction, this picturebook does not present the middle-class home as a domestic ideal. By documenting the routine but demanding life of a middle-class housewife, Olive Dehn suggests that all is not well in suburbia. 

By exploring issues such as poverty, the role of the state and gender politics within children’s literature, these radical authors encouraged young readers to seek solutions to the problems facing modern Britons. They refused to protect child readers from reality, encouraging them to question the world around them and strive for progress. Within radical children’s texts, children become central to achieving social change, meaning that they must receive contemporary information about the society that they live in. As this exhibition shows, radical children’s books were a key source of such information.

An unconventional adventure

Eleanor Graham’s The Children Who Lived in a Barn was the first Puffin Story Book. Like most books from the increasingly respected Puffin imprint, Graham’s book rapidly reached a wide readership and was admired in its day.  Exciting and comic by turns, the story of the Dunnett children as they attempt to cope on their own after their parents’ disappearance is more than just a light-hearted adventure story. Graham fully describes the challenges her young characters face: being evicted, having to work and study and care for their new home (a barn) at the same time, and fending off social criticism and coming to terms with the increasingly distant possibility of their parents’ return. The story captures some of the tribulations of premature independence and heavy responsibility, themes that were shortly to come to prominence for many young evacuees in wartime Britain.

Colourful front cover of The Children Who Lived in a Barn.
Front cover of Graham, Eleanor. The Children Who Lived in a Barn. (London: Puffin, 1938)

The emphasis and insistence on the children’s independence is striking in the text. Adults, who in children’s books are generally portrayed as a force of stability and security, are here largely presented as destabilising factors and even threats. The village women and District Visitor who aim to send the children off to orphanages are depicted as nuisances, and the landlord who evicts them is the clear villain of the story. Even the parents are not spared from criticism; they missed their airplane because they were buying stamps, forcing them to take a non-commercial plane which crashes. Their actions initiate the children’s troubles.  It is in part due to such subversive thoughts that the book was published anew in 2001 by Persephone Books. In removing the original brightly illustrated cover and replacing it with a simple grey jacket, the new edition presents The Children Who Lived in a Barn as a modern text not just for children but for adults as well.

Whilst at first glance the cover of the text (see image above) is reminiscent of more conservative children’s fiction depicting tame countryside adventures, the children can be seen carrying their belongings as they begin to live unsupervised by parents. Even the youngest child, Alice, can be seen carrying pots and pans, emphasising the independence of the child.

A plain grey front cover of The Children Who Lived in a Barn.
Front cover of Graham, Eleanor. The Children Who Lived in a Barn. (London: Persephone, 2001)

The modern cover (published 2001) of the text is much simpler than the original and showcases the status of the text as an established classic that does not need flamboyant graphics. The seriousness of this cover also reflects the social message of the story and the potential for children’s writers to hold positions of authority in terms of child welfare.

The housewife speaks out

Olive Dehn’s superficially amiable book Come In (1946) in fact raises questions about the lives of suburban housewives and children in post-war Britain. The representation of a typical middle-class nuclear family in this picturebook emphasises some of the tribulations that came with being a mother at the time and the restraints on children’s ability to explore and experiment. Dehn was a life-long anarchist who lived a life very different from that of her characters.

Front cover of Come In
Front cover of Dehn, Olive. Come In. (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1946)

Come In follows Mrs Markham, the mother, who complains about her dull life and is asked by her husband (an actor) to write an account of her day, so that he ‘could read exactly how dull it was’ (p. 2). Throughout the day the reader bears witness to the unending list of chores and challenges that Mrs Markham undertakes. She is the cook, cleaner and nanny, and appropriately is illustrated wearing an apron, and a black and white outfit that resembles the traditional uniform worn by maids in earlier generations. The whole text is punctuated by illustrations of, and references to, clocks. These show how regulated Mrs Markham’s day is, implying a machine-like routine, though without the order expected of a mechanised environment.

Mrs Markham is permanently in demand, hardly gaining a minute’s peace, whether it’s because her children and husband are continuously asking ‘where’s Mummy?’ (p. 7), or, because the phone or door-bell is ringing, there is another chore to be done, or somebody has had a minor accident. Whilst perhaps suggesting to young readers that they should appreciate their mothers’ efforts, there is also a slightly satirical tone, which perhaps only the adult reader would detect. References such as: ‘it’s time somebody began to think about getting dinner ready’ (p. 13), seem to be a wink to the mothers reading, as if to say, ‘I wonder who that might be?’ The book’s penultimate image is of the artist, who Mr. Markham has invited to draw the events of the day. As she walks away from the sleeping household she lights a cigarette and the two actions give a sense of independence and escape that the mother cannot attain. There is also an implicit sense that just witnessing the day is stressful enough to make the artist require a cigarette at the end of it.

Dehn challenges the expectation that being a 1940s housewife was a happy and rewarding role, and encourages her readers, whether children or adults, to see that new ideologies around home-making and child-rearing were highly restrictive. Just as their mother’s life is controlled by routine so too the children are shown as governed by a schedule and confined within clearly delimited spaces. Come In is less of an invitation than a threat; such a critical view of domestic life was highly unusual in children’s books of the period and so Come In sows the seeds of change radical change at the domestic level.

Illustration of a mother's routine, showing an image of a clock, mother holding a baby, ironing, reading/writing and 2 x cups of tea.
Illustration from Dehn, Olive. Come In. (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1946)

The inclusion of clocks in many of the illustrations emphasises how regimented the mother’s routine is. She runs like clock-work in an automated fashion, enforcing the idea that her life is composed and dominated by the time and everyone else’s separate routines.

Artistic innovation

The beginning of the twentieth century saw an aesthetic shift in both literature and fine art, including works aimed at children. The widespread social and economic change brought on by the Industrial Revolution and the First World War led to a rejection of traditional artistic values, particularly the nineteenth-century penchant for realism, which modernists and others involved in avant-garde activities regarded as outdated, limited and false. The modernist movement in literature saw the rise to prominence of authors whose work experimented with literary form resulting in texts which questioned the conventions of what a book could and should be. In the art world, expressionism championed the subjective over the figurative while surrealism revelled in the fractured logic of dreams, each challenging the notion that art must represent the physical world naturalistically.

These attitudes and ideas were taken up by children’s writers and illustrators in the first half of the last century. While often fantastical in their plots and settings, the majority of children’s books of the first ‘golden age’ presented their material realistically, with earnest prose and representative artwork. There were significant exceptions (notably Lewis Carroll’s Alice books), but the radical books produced during the period covered in this exhibition saw children’s literature pushing aesthetic boundaries in ways not previously seen.

This section includes two picturebooks in which the illustrations reference modernist styles and movements. The Pirate Twins (1929) by William Nicholson and Blue Peter (1943) by the Polish émigré graphic artists who worked under the name Lewitt-Him incorporate elements of contemporary artistic movements including modernism, surrealism and expressionism. Both books play with the relationship between words and pictures in the manner of collage and sometimes giving rise to gaps and contradictions that open up new intellectual spaces in writing for children.

Also featured in this section is Stephen King-Hall’s collection Young Authors and Artists of 1935, a compilation of stories, poems, articles and artwork created by children themselves. In publishing the collection, King-Hall challenged the conventional relationship between the authors and readers of children’s literature, giving children free rein to write stories they would want to read rather than passively receiving work created by adults. Their work at times also displays modernist tendencies – which was in line with the modernists’ view that like primitive people children naturally saw the world in fresh and original ways. These three texts, then, together serve as an indication of the breadth of aesthetically innovative work being undertaken by those involved in producing radical children’s literature during the early twentieth century.

Silhouettes of Prince Achmed and a woman from The Adventures of Prince Adhmed.
Silhouettes from The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Dir. by Lotte Reiniger. (Comenius-Film, 1926)

Created by taking over 93,000 still photographs of her cardboard silhouette characters and tinting each frame with colour, Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the oldest surviving animated feature film. Her experimental style and enormous ambition are typical of the innovative spirit of the era.

Illustration from Millions of Cats.
Illustration from Gág, Wanda. Millions of Cats. (New York: Coward-McCann, 1928)

One of the first modern picturebooks, Millions of Cats combined a simple, albeit surprising violent, narrative with fantastical images which blend the titular cats with the scenery to the point that they become difficult to distinguish.

Front cover of The Cat and the Devil.
Front cover of Joyce, James. The Cat and the Devil. (New York: Schocken, 1981)
Originally penned as a letter from Joyce to his grandson in 1936, The Cat and the Devil is a retelling of a French folk tale was posthumously published as a picture book first in 1964 and again in 1981. While the story is a straightforward fable, a far cry from the radical innovation of his adult-oriented work, this nonetheless shows a prominent modernist author interacting with the world of children’s literature.

Redrawing the picturebook

The Pirate Twins (1929) by English illustrator William Nicholson was among the first wave of children’s picture books to employ modernist artistic styles and experiment with the relationship between words and pictures.  Nicholson was a noted graphic artist, illustrator and engraver known for his visually innovative works; together his two picturebooks, The Pirate Twins and Clever Bill (1926), helped to change accepted ideas of what picturebooks could be. The Pirate Twins tells the story of Mary, who finds the titular twins on a beach, takes them home, and tries to teach them how  to behave, only to find that they have little interest in learning.

Front cover of The Pirate Twins, depicting the Pirate Twins on a yellow background.
Front cover of Nicholson, William. The Pirate Twins. (London: Faber & Faber, 1929)

Coming at a time when most picture books used illustrations decoratively rather than as part of the storytelling process, Nicholson’s books were innovative at the levels of both story and style. Neither its text nor its images can stand alone and thus turn what had been picture books into the interdependent picturebook in which words are incorporated into the pictures themselves, the colour of the text is changed to add emphasis to certain words, and the images sometimes depict important events unmentioned in the text. The Pirate Twins and Clever Bill demand a degree of interaction from their readers, asking them to read the words and the images in tandem and piece the story together themselves, rather than having it told to them in clear detail.

The portrayal of the anarchic, uncivilised twins hints at an anti-colonialist as well as a modernist agenda. Try as she might, Mary cannot ‘civilise’ the twins, and they eventually sail back to their home. This is seen as a happy ending, suggesting that people of other cultures cannot and should not be remoulded into the white British ‘ideal’. The twins’ spontaneity and original way of seeing the world also reflects modernist appreciation of ‘primitives’. 

Illustration from The Pirate Twins depicting the Pirate Twins alongside their friend Mary.
Illustration from Nicholson, William. The Pirate Twins. (London: Faber & Faber, 1929)

In this image, depicting the Pirate Twins alongside their friend Mary, highlights the stark difference in their depiction; the over-simplified, non-naturalistic aesthetic used to illustrate the twins marks them out as not only different but primitive when compared to the girl.

Illustrating inequality

Blue Peter uses a children’s picturebook to tell a tale of marginalised minorities at the time of its production during the World War II. Jan Lewitt and George Him were both Polish and Jewish, meaning that they had personal insights into the Nazi persecution of minority groups. The pair found themselves in London at the onset of war; there they discovered a network of artistic émigrés. Lewitt-Him as they styled themselves became known for their innovative use of strong colour, imaginative abstraction and symbolic surrealist graphics.

Front cover of Blue Peter.
Front cover of Lewitt-Him. Blue Peter. (London: Faber & Faber, 1943)

Their use of bold colour and minimalistic graphics can be seen in Blue Peter, as the titular dog is immediately recognisable as a minority through the visual contrast between the white fur of his mother and siblings and his own blue coat.  Since the colour of his fur also informs his name, there is a suggestion that his colour constructs his identity. His mother even tries to bleach him white through fear that he will not be accepted by their master. However, the characterisation of Peter as a loveable puppy allows the reader to sympathise with his plight, and as is true of several of the texts in this exhibition, individuality is celebrated rather than condemned. Sailor Jeff adopts the abandoned puppy, stating that he has ‘always wanted a blue dog’, and giving rise to a series of adventures that sees Blue Peter become a hero.

Lewitt-Him’s illustrations take an expressionist approach to conveying the emotions of their protagonist; that is, instead of presenting the reader with an objective reality, the images are distorted for sympathetic effect. For example, in addition to highlighting Peter’s otherness in relation to his fellow characters, his blue coat is shown to reflect his state of mind; he is sad, or indeed ‘blue’. For readers of the book it is significant that Peter is colourful while his surroundings and the other characters are rendered drained of colour and variety. Sailor Jeff stands out because his shirt is also coloured blue.

The book’s innovative use of modernist graphics and surrealist elements departs from both the didactic tendencies of some politically radical writing for children and conservative works which shied away from including experimental artwork. Nevertheless, a socialist ideology of acceptance and unity prevails in the text, whilst the use of a minority figure as a heroic protagonist encourages children to embrace their individuality and carries a deeper political message at a time when the fight against fascism was a daily reality.

Illustration of a mother dog with sleeping pups by her side and one pup which is coloured a pastel green colour from Blue Peter.
Illustration from Lewitt-Him. Blue Peter. (London: Faber & Faber, 1943)

The expressionist bent in Lewitt-Him’s illustrations can be seen in these images, with Peter’s blue colouring contrasting with his monochrome surroundings, reflecting both his emotional state and his position as an outsider.

Children write back

Stephen King-Hall’s Young Authors and Artists of 1935 is one of a very few examples of writing for children produced by children. The book is a collection of stories, poetry, articles, and illustrations written and created by children and collected by Stephen King-Hall, who at that time had been a presenter on the BBC’s current affairs program Children Hour for five years. At the beginning of the book, King-Hall writes a foreword explaining that in his capacity as Editor of MINE, a magazine for children, he was sent many stories, poems and other kinds of writing by his young readers. This volume comprises the works he saw as displaying the most talent.

Page from King-Hall, Stephen, ed. Young Authors and Artists of 1935, showing a clown holding a hoop with a pantomime horse.
Page from King-Hall, Stephen, ed. Young Authors and Artists of 1935. (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1935)

King-Hall was a radical thinker who was involved in politics, standing as an independent MP between 1937 and 1945. His political interests may have affected his selection of material, but evidently at least some children too were interested in topical issues. This can be seen, for instance, in the piece entitled ‘The Ruin of the Countryside’ which laments the pollution of the English country and ends with a dystopian glimpse into what the future might look like if the lack of environmental concern continues. Such examples of socially engaged pieces in the collection encourage readers to be socially aware and forward-thinking, and also to write about these social concerns and to make a change in society themselves.

The child authors show themselves to be alert to the conventions associated with material usually classified as children’s literature. For instance, one contribution reworks the well-known story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ so that instead of porridge the bears eat fruit salad and at the end of story the whole thing is dismissed as nonsense because, of course, ‘bears don’t talk’. This rejection of traditional stories as well as the privileging of children as makers of their own literature functions as a form of ‘writing-back’ on the part of the contributors.

The illustrations in Young Authors and Artists were also created by children and are expressive, diverse and engaging. They disregard romantic childhood images produced by adults — for example sweetly innocent children playing nicely in pastoral settings and often make use of unusual visual devices such as the white silhouette in ‘A Midnight Gallop’. Together the works in the volume show the young contributors to be actively engaged in thinking about the world around them and innovative in terms of how to represent it.

“A Midnight Gallop” (right) by an 11 year old girl contrasts the images of the foreground: the horse, bushes and the moon, with the dark background of the night. The polar opposite to a silhouette, these objects in the foreground are white instead of black.
‘A Midnight Gallop’ from King-Hall, Stephen, ed. Young Authors and Artists of 1935. (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1935)

The piece “A Midnight Gallop” (right) by an 11 year old girl contrasts the images of the foreground: the horse, bushes and the moon, with the dark background of the night. The polar opposite to a silhouette, these objects in the foreground are white instead of black.

Acknowledgements

The following students on the module ‘Radical Children’s Literature of the Early Twentieth Century’ contributed research and content to this exhibition:

Isabel Ashton, Ruth Bader, Louise Bartlett, Olivia Bland, Roderick Briggs, Sarah Bryan, Charlotte Burt, Lucy Campbell-Woodward, Hannah Carty, Salome Choa, Phoebe Clark, Alice Commins, Sarah Cripps, Rachel Davidson, Louise Dubuisson, Georgina Forshaw, Amy Fox, Ruby Gullon, Emily Hattrick, Jack Hawkins, Clara Heathcock, Michael Holden, Hannah Hunter, Esther Knowles, Imogen Lepere, Charles Lynch, Caroline Mackrill, Kerry Marshall, Alice Medforth, Heather Nicol, Francesca Nuttall, Helen Overton, Lucy Pares, Catherine Parkinson, Rebecca Pratt, Constance Richardson, Emily Seymour, Jennifer Smethurst, Angela Stone, Sam Summers, Jennifer Thynne, Rebecca Goor


Newcastle Illuminated, 1814 – May 2014

Two hundred years ago this month, on the evening of 10th May 1814, the town of Newcastle was flooded with light in celebration of the defeat and abdication of Napoleon and his exile to Elba, perceived to signal the end of the Napoleonic Wars which had seen the country at war for more than ten years.

This broadside advertised the illumination event. It was seemingly well-organised by town officials who were anxious to preserve the peace and ensure safety, forbidding the letting-off of guns and fireworks and appointing Peace Officers to patrol the streets. Participants were also warned not to harass any Quakers who might abstain from the celebrations on religious grounds, being pacifists.

The event was universally held to be a great success. Local newspapers printed lengthy and effusively-worded accounts. The Newcastle Advertiser said, “At half-past eight o’clock in the evening the signal was given from the castle for lighting up, and, as if by magic, the whole town appeared in a few minutes one blaze of light”. People from all classes of society took part by lighting up their home or premises, “every one striving to excel his neighbour in testifying his joy at the return of peace, after a sanguinary war of unusual duration”.

All of the light displays were patriotic and many incorporated transparencies, pictures made from translucent paints on materials like calico, linen or oiled paper and lit from behind with candles.

Highlights included Messrs Farrington of the Bigg-market who filled the arched gateway in front of their warehouse with a large transparency of the Duke of Wellington attired as Mars, presenting Peace to Britannia; and Messrs Brumwell and Dobson, chemists, Sandhill who exhibited a large painting representing the inside of a laboratory and the Devil pounding Bonaparte to powder in a mortar. Mr Waters’ Floor-cloth manufactory was singled out as being especially brilliant, incorporating a giant lit image of an anchor, nearly 40 feet high. The doorway of the Theatre Royal was lavishly lit and occupied by the Newcastle arms with a Latin inscription which in translation means, “May Newcastle flourish into eternity, nourished by abundance and peace”. Also mentioned is a certain Mr Dobson, architect, of Mosley Street who displayed a transparency of Britannia seated, with the British Lion defiantly pacing the shore. Displays such as that at the Dun Cow public house on the Quayside, “a neat, though small transparency, exhibiting the Sailor paid off, and the Soldier returned to this wife and family” hint at the social and economic disruption that the Wars had brought.

It would seem the town officials’ precautionary measures paid off, as the Advertiser reported, “We did not hear of a single disturbance or accident”. According to the Chronicle, the only negative element to the proceedings was “the carelessness and indifference of the coachmen, who were driving the carriages of those who chose to view the exhibition of the evening in that manner; as, by their negligence, were often endangered the lives and limbs of the pedestrians.”

Of course, these celebrations would prove to be a year premature, as ten months later Napoleon escaped from Elba and reassumed power over France until his eventual defeat at Waterloo in June 1815.