All About: Horses

For the very last in our All About Animal series, this festive month we are going to explore the horses that appear in the Seven Stories Collection. After you have read this post, why not click on the tab at the bottom to bring up all the other posts from this year long series. Just a tease - next year we will be exploring the terrific territory of transport!

We hold material for some very famous literary horses, as you will see below when we take a look at an item from the archive, an artwork, and a book from the store.

Line and colour illustrations by Charlotte Hough for the cover of Black Beauty, written by Anna Sewell (Puffin Books, 1954)

One of the best selling books of all time, and arguably the most well known book told from the perspective of a horse, Black Beauty was originally written, not as a children's book, but as a treatise on the need for better treatment of horses in Victorian England. It was the author, Anna Sewell's only book, and she died before knowing quite how popular the book would become.

The illustrations for the very first Puffin edition, chosen by editor Eleanor Graham and published in 1954, were created by Charlotte Hough. The two black and white, pen and ink line drawings shown in the image above would have been used by the printer to reproduce the black lines for the cover of the book. The colour elements of the cover would have been created separately, using the colour sketch, also shown in the images alternating above. The different elements would have then been merged together in the final printing.

The collection holds the complete suite of finished artwork, the cover, as shown above, as well as 18 black and white internal illustrations. The rest of the Charlotte Hough Collection consists of original artwork for 13 published titles for children, including complete suites of illustrations for the Puffin edition of Five Proud Riders, written by Ann Stafford. The collection also includes a hand-made dummy for an apparently unpublished picture book. The whole collection was donated in 2009, by two of Hough's children, Alexandra Hough and the novelist Deborah Moggach, following Hough's passing in 2008.

Black Beauty's Family, (Hodder and Stoughton, 1978)

Following on from this month’s featured illustrations for Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, this month’s printed book is Black Beauty’s Family, written by Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson.

This book was published in 1978 and is the second of three volumes of historical stories by the most famous ‘pony story’ writing dynasty of all time, the Pullein-Thompson family, which follow ‘in the hoofprints’ of Black Beauty. Told from the horse's point of view, these stories tell of the lives of a number of Black Beauty's relatives. This particular volume includes 3 short stories, one by each of the sisters: Nightshade by Josephine, Black Romany by Diana, and Blossom by Christine Pullein-Thompson.

This copy of Black Beauty’s Family is to be found in the ‘Warwickshire Libraries Award Winning children's books’ Collection, which was donated to Seven Stories in 1997. This collection is made up of 260 books published between 1936 and 1996, predominantly past winners of the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals. This book won neither of these awards, although Josephine Pullein-Thompson was awarded the Golden PEN (Poets, Essayists and Novelists) Award in 2007 for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature” and was appointed MBE in 1984. We haven't yet been able to ascertain which award Black Beauty’s Family might have won - if any - and thus why it appears in this ‘Award Winning’ collection! Can you help?

We hold a couple of other ‘prize winning’ book collections which you might like to find out more about: Vera Coleman’s ‘Modern Picture Book Collection: award winners and their books’; and our own collection of Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medal shortlisted titles 2006-date. If you want to find out more about Seven Stories shadowing of the awards, and our holdings of Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medal winners, click here. 

Manuscript for The Little Wooden Horse, by Ursula Moray Williams, (G.G. Harrap & Co., 1937), shown alongside a 1959 Puffin edition of the book.

This small wooden toy represents one of the oldest books represented in the Seven Stories archive, as our collecting period runs from the 1930s to the present day. It is also one of the earlier pieces donated, given to us by the creator, Ursula John (nee Moray Williams), in July 2005, just before Seven Stories opened its doors as a visitor centre.

This amazingly legible manuscript follows through the whole story, and is complemented in the archive by the later typescript, a further version of the story which was sent to the publisher. The manuscript does contain occasional notations and crossings out, but, as seen above, these are relatively few. The story follows the little wooden horse on many adventures - gathering pirate treasure, working in a coal mine, walking a tightrope in the circus, and other such adventures you can imagine a toy might have! Throughout the book, the little horse longs to return to his maker, Uncle Peder, whom he wished never to leave.

The Ursula Moray Williams Collection represents her long career, from the 1930s to the 1990s.  It contains manuscripts, typescripts and related draft material for 36 of her published works, as well as original artwork relating to nine of her published books (including Gobbolino the Witches Cat, and unpublished sketches for The Further Adventures of Gobbolino and the Little Wooden Horse). The archive also contains personal and professional correspondence spanning Williams' career as a children's author, including correspondence from family and friends, fans, schoolchildren, publishing houses, professional organisations, literary agents, other children's authors, illustrators, and others active in the field of children's literature; and a small quantity of personal papers which includes royalty statements, press cuttings and reviews, notes for articles and talks, and book jackets.

That is it for this year, if you have you missed any of our All About Animal blog posts, click here to find them all together for your reading pleasure!

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.

All About: Mice

The Seven Stories Collection holds the entire archive of one particularly famous mouse, Angelina Ballerina. However, we have written so much about Angelina recently, we thought it would be nice to explore some of the many other mice we have in the store (purely literary mice, no real ones!). If you are feeling inspired to explore more Seven Stories mice, click here to see all our Angelina posts.

Draft material by Martin Waddell for The Great Green Mouse Disaster, illustrated by Phillipe Dupasquier (Andersen Press, 1981)

November's first mouse, or hoard of mice, is the fantastically imaginative book by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier. The book is virtually wordless, and as each page unfolds, the viewer is presented with a cross section of a hotel. Turn the page again and the action has moved on slightly, as you follow the progress of the rampaging hoard of green mice scattering throughout the hotel, causing chaos!

The archival material we hold runs to one, reasonably large, A4 file, full of Waddell's plans and notes for how the book should work. It being a particularly unusual book, I was very curious to work out how someone would go about planning it. It turns out that Waddell had some fairly concrete ideas about how he would like the book to look, and created a detailed 'story' for each characters progression on each page. The book is full of some brilliant detail, and it would take anyone a very long time to really find every different element. At the end of the book, there is even a list of things that Waddell thinks the reader might not have noticed!

Below is a sample of 'Story 4 The Mouseman', who is responsible for all this calamity:

'He is in the pursuit of the Mice and the Cat. In the cover illustration he will scoop up a milk bottle and this should be about his person as he runs. In 1 he is in the dining room, level 3, catching a glass of wine in mid air as it tumbled of the tray of the shocked waiter, who has been knocked aside by the jumping cat and cascading mice. Has has scooped a chicken from the table in passing, and is clambering over it - the table, not the chicken - to the stairs from 3 to 5.'

The Martin Waddell Collection, kindly donated by the author in 2008, consists of drafts and pre-publication material for 53 picture books and 63 educational books, including those published under the pseudonym Catherine Sefton. Several of the picture books have artwork represented elsewhere in the collection, such as Can't You Sleep Little Bear, illustrated by Barbara Firth, Tiny's Big Adventure, illustrated by John Lawrence and The Pig in the Pond, illustrated by Jill Barton. The collection also includes a series of notebooks and appointment diaries, and a series of printed books written by Waddell. 

Artwork by Emily Gravett for Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, (Macmillan, 2007), inlaid with picture of title page of the Seven Stories copy of the book. Artwork © Emily Gravett, 2007

This artwork is an example of a much smaller collection than the one mentioned above, as it consists of just this one piece of artwork! These mice are final pieces of artwork used in the end papers, and  the 'Phagophobia (Fear of being eaten)' page. Another incredibly imaginative mouse led tale, this follows our hero, Little Mouse, on his journey through a book exploring all his different fears - entomophobia, clinophobia, acrophobia - amongst others. The pages are covered in little mouse 'nibble' marks, with several fold out pages of additional sumptuous detail, such as the 'Visitor's Map of the ISLE OF FRIGHTS'.

This collection may only contain one piece of artwork, executed in pencil, acrylic, and watercolour, but there is also an additional mouse illustration on the reverse of the card. The wider Seven Stories Collection actually does contain other work by Emily Gravett, also, by strange coincidence, of mice. Gravett kindly donated the piece above, and also her preliminary artwork, final pieces and prints of the final work for 'A was an apple pie' in Elizabeth Hammill's Over the Hills and Far Away. Some of this work is currently on display in Rhyme Around the World, at Seven Stories in Newcastle.

A Counting Book by Helen Craig, published by Aurum Press Ltd. c.1980

This month’s printed book featuring mice is A Counting Book by Helen Craig. Of course this tiny little mouse-filled book is by the illustrator of that other famous mouse Angelina Ballerina – oops!  We weren’t meant to mention her this month but this is too good an opportunity to showcase a less familiar book by Helen Craig, and one which was published before Angelina burst into the world in 1983.

This printed book comes from Pat Garrett’s Counting Book collection and is one of the smallest books in our collection, measuring just 5.5 cm square.  It comes in its own little slipcase which physically constrains the long concertina of pages.  Each double-page spread features colour illustrations of mice amusingly constructing the numbers 0 to10 out of a variety of handy objects including balloons, string, flowers, bubbles, and (as in the photo) a jigsaw puzzle ‘7’ which looks suspiciously like it’s made from pieces of cheese! The final 3 double spreads somehow accommodates 100 tiny mice!

Pat Garrett kindly donated her Counting Book collection to Seven Stories in 2006.  It consists of over 640 counting and number related books, mostly published between 1960 and 2000. Whilst this collection is made up mainly of picture books, it also includes books in a variety of formats such as board books, rag books, pop-up books, activity books, as well as three 19th Century mathematics text books and even friezes, an advent calendar, and plastic counting blocks.

To find out about Pat Garrett’s Alphabet book collection, check out our ‘Bird’ blog in May earlier this year by clicking here.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.

All About: Lions

This month our feature animal is the majestic lion. An ever popular animal in children's literature, especially for younger readers who may enjoy 'roaring' along with the pictures! This month again we will take a look at an illustration, archival item and a book to explore three very different elements of our collection.

Illustration by Robert Ingpen for 'The Lion and the Unicorn', Over the Hills and Far Away, collected by Elizabeth Hammill (Francis Lincoln, 2014)

Our first example this month is this beautiful work from the Australian illustrator Robert Ingpen. Currently on display in our Rhyme Around the World exhibition (click here to find out more and how to visit), this artwork is executed in graphite pencil, acrylic paint and pastel. It is just one of the many different contributions from 77 different illustrators, collected together by co-founder of Seven Stories, Elizabeth Hammill. 

Elizabeth chose nursery rhymes from around the English speaking world, and presented them together in one volume, with fantastic, newly commissioned illustrations. This particular artwork was one of two submitted by Ingpen, and is the one that was used in the final book. The other work, for 'Humpy Dumpty' unfortunately didn't fit within the book's structure, as there was a limit of maximum one double spread per illustrator. If you look very closely, you can also see that Ingpen has included Hammill's name in the illustration - 'Hammill's Breads and Cakes'.

The illustration is for the very well known English rhyme 'The Lion and the Unicorn'.

The lion and the unicorn

Were fighting for the crown;

The lion beat the unicorn

All round about the town.

Some gave them white bread,

And some gave them brown;

Some gave them plum cake

And drummed them out of town.

The first written record of the rhyme is in 1709, shortly after the Act of Union between the English and Scottish parliaments and the formation of 'Great Britain'. It is possible that the rhyme refers to fights between the lion (England) and the unicorn (Scotland) - the royal coat of arms having been amalgamated earlier in the seventeenth century to show both beasts after the crowning of the Scottish King James I as King of England.

To buy a copy of this book, with all proceeds going towards supporting Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books, click here.

Typescript for The Prince Who Walked with Lions by Elizabeth Laird, (Macmillan, 2012)

This month's example of archival material is taken from Elizabeth Laird's The Prince Who Walked with Lions. The story takes place in a location Laird has often returned to in her work, Abyssinia - modern day Ethiopia, having lived, worked and travelled there extensively. It is based on the true story of the young prince Alamayu, whose father has been murdered by the British Army. Set in 1868, during the Abyssinia Campaign, Alamayu is taken by the British back to England, and sent to boarding school there. 

The section shown in the image above is taken from the printed typescript, the archive also holds an earlier hand written manuscript, written predominantly on the back of printed correspondence, research and typescripts for other books. In the pictured section, close to the end of the book, Alamayu has a very moving meeting with a caged lion, part of a travelling 'menagerie' that has come by his school, and he feels a strong connection to this symbol of his home.

'His smell took hold in my nostrils. I breathed in deeply that rich, long-forgotten mustiness of lion.'

Extract from The Prince Who Walked with Lions

The Elizabeth Laird Collection, donated by the author in 2012, consists of draft material and correspondence relating to 25 of her published novels for children, including the Carnegie nominated Secret Friends, Jake's Tower, The Garbage King and Crusade. There are also re-tellings of traditional stories and anthologies edited by Laird, material relating to the British Council project collecting traditional stories in Ethiopia and a small quantity of personal papers. 

To find out more about Laird's work in Ethiopia, or to explore The Ethiopian Story Collecting Project set up by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education and the British Council, click here and here.

This month’s featured books are copies of Disney’s The Lion King in a variety of editions, which were all published by Ladybird Books to tie-in with the American animated musical film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 15, 1994.

The Lion King is the story of Simba, a young lion who is to succeed his father, Mufasa, as king.  However, after Simba's uncle Scar murders Mufasa, Simba is manipulated into thinking he was responsible and flees into exile in shame and despair. Throughout his childhood, Simba is given some valuable perspective by his friends, and his shaman, Rafiki, and once he’s grown-up he returns to challenge Scar to end his tyranny.

The film has led to many derived works, including a Broadway adaptation, a sequel The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (in 1998) and of course, a whole host of film tie-in books, as above! These illustrate the brilliance of Ladybird books in producing multiple formats of the same title, aimed at a variety of audiences in terms of reading ability (length of text, quantity of illustrations, and level of activity) and at a range of affordable prices for different pockets. There is a film tie-in book for everyone!

These six books are from our Ladybird Books Collection. This collection was donated to Seven Stories after the publisher Pearson decided to fully merge Ladybird into its Penguin Books subsidiary, and the Ladybird offices and printing factory in Loughborough were closed. This happened in 1998, and much of the company's archive of historic artwork was also transferred to public collections at the same time.

Our Ladybird collection consists of over 2,000 books and includes more than 1,500 books in the traditional Ladybird format, more than 200 ‘Disney’ related books, and about 250 items in a variety of other formats including: bath, cloth and board books; activity, sticker, and colouring books; cassette tape and book packs; and even friezes.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.

All About: Dragons

This month's subject of our animals post is one our favourites - the dragon! We here at Seven Stories don't doubt the existence of the dragon, they are definitely a cornerstone of animals in children's books! There is also a Seven Stories touring exhibition all about dragons and Vikings currently making its way around the UK, having already visited Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Ulster Museum in Belfast, it will be showing in Kilmarnock, Norwich and Carlisle over the next year. To find out more about A Vikings Guide to Deadly Dragons with Cressida Cowell, click here.

Draft typescript for Peter Dickinson's The Flight of Dragons (Pierrot Publishing, 1979)

Our first showcase item this month is the collected correspondence, research and draft typescript from Peter Dickinson's The Flight of Dragons. This is a true gem of a book, where Dickinson deadpan's his belief in dragons, and calmly lays out the scientific basis for why dragons could have existed. The above image is a late draft of the main text of the book, where he lays his claim and sets out his thesis.

'I am not going to prove that ninety-foot lizards once floated in the skies of earth and scorched whole villages with plumes of flame, because I don't think it can be proved... But I can put together a coherent theory which is at least as probable as the theory that dragons are completely legendary.'

Extract from above image, Peter Dickinson, c. 1979

Dickinson carried out huge amounts of research for the book, some of which is evidenced within the archive. He hunted out many mythical stories, from around Britain and the rest of the world. Included was also a map of dragon myths from around the UK, including one very near Seven Stories Collection home, the Lambton Worm (less than 10 miles away!). The book covers many points in an attempt to persuade the reader of the existence of dragons, as is shown below.

'How they breathed fire, why they dieted on princesses but were able to go for such long periods between meals, what they actually used all that gold for, why Chinese dragons look different, why there are no fossils found so far, and so on.'

Extract from the first letter sent to Pierrot Publishing, outlining his idea for a new book on dragons, Peter Dickinson, 16th March 1978

The Dickinson Collection is extensive, constituting a complete record of Dickinson's work as a children's writer spanning from the 1960s until 2006, and provides information on all aspects of writing, editing and publishing books for children during the period covered. As the majority of Dickinson's children's titles were published in both America and Britain, the collection provides a great deal of information on the publication of children's books in both countries and illustrates some of the differences in attitude and approach between British and American editors and publishers. The collection also documents the relationship between the author, illustrator and publisher/editor in the production of illustrated titles, and the complications which can arise in such collaborations. 

Felt model of 'R. Dragon' from Rosemary Manning's Dragon series, c. 1980

The vast majority of the Seven Stories Collection contains 2D works, a huge amount of archive and artwork material, and so it is a treat for us to find any 3D objects lurking amongst the stacks in the store. This is a particularly beautiful handmade example of the limited number of objects in our collection. Although sadly we don't know who made this dragon, we do have a photo of Rosemary Manning holding a very similar model, and it was donated to the collection alongside rest of Manning's estate in 2007. Lis Whitelaw, the executor of the estate, said the model was created to celebrate the publishing of the final book in the series, Dragon in the Harbour, in 1980.

R. Dragon is the star of the Dragon series, the first three of which were published in the late 1950s and early 60s, and the final book, after a reasonably long hiatus, in 1980. It follows a young girl, Susan, who is on holiday at the beach when she discovers a dragon in a cave. She befriends him and he tells her many stories of his past adventures, and they occasionally go out together too. He is not the kind of dragon that goes around eating knights, or at least not any more (having lost his teeth...), and is one of the most well mannered dragons you are likely to meet after learning his manners at the court of King Arthur. He isn't a huge fan of all the tourists, but that can be counteracted by bringing him something to eat - which is why in the model above he is shown holding an almond bun!

The Manning Collection, other than model dragons, contains a collection of drafts, correspondence, and a small amount of original artwork and other associated material relating to some of her books for children. We also hold first editions of all of Manning's books for children, along with some American and foreign language editions, and inscribed first editions of several books by Catherine Storr, who was a close friend of Rosemary Manning.  

The Dragon by Archibald Marshall, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone (Hamish Hamilton, 1966)

Finally, this month’s featured book from our collection is The Dragon published in 1966. The story was first published 36 years earlier in Punch magazine, and then appeared in Archibald Marshall’s Simple stories from Punch in 1930, illustrated by George Morrow.

The quotation from the jacket flap tells us this story for children is a rather unusual version of the 'traditional tale of the beautiful princess, the dreadful dragon and the princes who came to kill it, told with several hilarious differences and the drawings of Edward Ardizzone at his wittiest.' Although Seven Stories does not hold any of the original artwork for The Dragon, fans of Edward Ardizzone might like to know that we do have artwork for two of his titles Tim in Danger, Tim and Charlotte and for Graham Greene's, The Little Train.

This copy of the The Dragon is taken from the Elaine Moss Book Collection. A personal collection - from the 1977 winner of the Eleanor Farjeon award - it consists of 773 children’s novels, picture books and books about children’s literature. Donated to Seven Stories by Moss in 2003, most were published between the 1950s and the end of 1990s, and is particularly strong in titles published in the 1970s and 1980s.

'Elaine Moss is a British critic and librarian whose work as a commentator and reviewer brought serious attention to children’s books. Moss trained as a librarian and worked as a teacher and in publishing before becoming a freelance journalist and broadcaster. As selector of the annual Children’s Books of the Year exhibition and author of the accompanying catalogue from 1970 to 1979, she played an important role in recognising the trends and talents that developed in that period. She championed the promotion of picture books to older readers, overturning the traditional restriction of picture books to children who cannot yet read.'

Julia Eccleshare in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature 

(OUP, 2006)

To find out more about the Thimble Press, with whom Moss worked regularly, click here.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.

All About: Rabbits

This month our feature animal is a particular favourite of this blogger*, we are going to be raving about rabbits! We will again, take a look at an illustration, archival item and a book to explore three very different elements of our collection.

The Illustrated Edition of Watership Down by Richard Adams, illustrated by John Lawrence, (Penguin Books/Kestrel Books, 1976), and Watership Down: an exhibition catalogue, (Henry Sotheran Ltd., 1982)

We could hardly start an exploration of rabbits in children's books with any other story, although through these books we discover Watership Down almost didn't get published, having been rejected by 4 publishers and 3 literary agents! This is a beautiful edition, created 4 years after its original publication in 1972, with John Lawrence illustrations in pen and ink with colour wash, and a fold out map of the warrens depicted in the story. 

This wonderful, and at times harrowing, book follows the fortunes of a band of rabbits on the edge of the imminent destruction of their home. There is a wonderful preface which really captures the spirit of the book:

 'This is a book about rabbits – real rabbits who act throughout in accordance with real rabbit behaviour and instincts. From the very first page, the reader enters the rabbit world completely, seeing things through their eyes, smelling the scents of the countryside as only an animal living in the wild can, living their terrors and their triumphs with them.'

We also discovered a thirty year old exhibition catalogue, with detailed descriptions of the all the material displayed in a special ten year anniversary exhibition of Watership Down. It has a brilliant foreword by Adams, shown below. Although we don't share this opinion of early manuscripts(!), it is fascinating to know how some authors perceive their pre publication material. At the time of writing Watership Down, Adams was a member of the British Civil Service, possibly where he got his desire to always keep letters, no matter what.

'I have never bothered much about the manuscripts…of my books.  As far as I’m concerned, they are first scratchings, full of faults, and nowhere near so exciting or satisfying as a copy of the end-product, the book…..There is a paradox here.  One throws away drafts once they’ve been typed and submitted.  One never throws away letters: one files them.  This is why all the original letters of rejection and so on relating to ‘Watership Down’ have survived intact, when they might have been expected, I suppose, to have been torn up in a rage.'

Richard Adams Watership Down: an exhibition catalogue, 1982

These books are held within the Kaye Webb Working Library collection, which runs to a staggering 2'346 books. Webb was the Editor of Puffin books during the 1960s and 70s, exerting a major influence of children's books publishing, and it is fantastically useful to have her library here at Seven Stories to complement her archive. If you would like to find out more about Kaye Webb, search the blog or click here or here.

Dummy book and wood engraving print by John Lawrence, for Rabbit and Pork (Hamish Hamilton, 1975)

During the early 1970s, John Lawrence must have spent a fair amount of time drawing rabbits, as the second item in this months series is also John Lawrence artwork! These fantastic illustrations for this unusual story showcase his distinctive engraving style, and are quite different from the above pen and ink illustrations for Watership Down. Held in the collection is a copy of the dummy book, and two final black and white prints. The story follows the adventures of our heroes, Rabbit and Pork, including various criminal activities, but all told in the format of descriptive cockney rhyming slang!

In the above image, the change from dummy book to final artwork style is quite dramatic. We have many examples of dummy books within the collection, and this is a particularly well detailed one, in full colour throughout, suggesting it was possibly created later in the process, and near to having the final story. In the printed book, the story remains mostly faithful to the dummy, although there are frequent changes in page layout, possibly due to the change in medium from painting to wood engraving. 

The John Lawrence Collection held at Seven Stories shows a wide variation in his artwork style, from pen and ink drawings, watercolour, to layered wood engravings. Amongst several other books, we hold work by Lawrence for three Robert Westall titles (happily complementing our large Westall Collection), two books with Philip Pullman (Lyra's Oxford  and Once Upon a Time in the North, also complementing our Pullman Collection, which holds material for other books in the Northern Lights universe), and our newest acquisition - Wayland, written by Tony Mitton (for which we also have ANOTHER complementary collection of the work of Tony Mitton, including two notebooks in which he wrote the text for this book).

Also, for those who haven't yet twigged, 'rabbit and pork' is cockney rhyming slang for 'talk'!

Correspondence between Treld Bicknell of Pan Books, and Faith Jaques, 1981 and 1982. 

Today's final example is taken from the archive of Faith Jaques, a dedicated illustrator with a long career in children's books. Here we have two (of several) letters between herself and her editor, Treld Bicknell of Pan Books, throughout the early 1980s. They refer to Jaques' new illustrations for a collection of Little Grey Rabbit stories by Alison Uttley, Tales of Little Grey Rabbit. They had originally been illustrated by Margaret Tempest, but had been out of print for some time. A note contained in one of the books in our collection tells us that the original artwork by Tempest had been lost, and the original printings weren't suitable for reproduction, being too 'dingy' to compete with other children's books on the market at the time. The tales contain - The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit, How Little Grey Rabbit Got Back Her Tail, The Great Adventure of Hare and The Story of Fuzzypeg the Hedgehog. All these stories were originally published between 1929 and 1932, and are amongst Uttley's most well known books.

What comes across very clearly in the letters above is Jaques commitment to securing better rights for illustrators, particularly around image copyright. She has obviously written to the publisher to confirm she will be credited appropriately, and be given the right copyright line in the new editions. Sometimes illustrators would not be credited at all, or not be paid lending fees from libraries. It is also interesting to read that she is confirming her rights to sell the artwork from the book; for many years some publishers kept the original works of art themselves. Later in the series of letters, ironically, it turns out that there have been issues returning the artwork, and she only just received her work back in February 1983, two years after originally sending it. It is also interesting to note that over time, Tempest's original illustrations of the stories have been lost completely (if anyone does know of their whereabouts, it would be fascinating to hear!).

The Faith Jaques Collection also comprises a beautiful collection of printed books, her working reference library with many much older than our usual collecting period. We also hold illustration work for more than 50 of her books, varying between final illustrations, alternative illustrations, proof copies, dummies and sketches. These include original alternative drawings for the first UK edition of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The archive also holds a series of correspondence and notes about the campaign for Public Lending Rights in libraries, and a small amount of personal papers and ephemera. 

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.

*Full disclosure, I have two wonderful, and slightly pesky, rabbits - Mac and Horatio!

All About: Dogs

This month we are daft about dogs, in honour of the Seven Stories exhibition tour to Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery! Our Enid Blyton exhibition - Mystery, Magic and Midnight Feasts: the Many Adventures of Enid Blyton opened on Wednesday 17th June. It will be on display until the end of August, with a further tour venue at Scarborough Art Gallery in spring 2016 to look forward to.

Typescript page from Five on a Hike Together, written by Enid Blyton (Hodder and Stoughton, 1951), pictured with a contemporary proof copy of the same title.

So of course, our first item to explore this month will be one of Blyton's manuscripts, Five on a Hike Together, with a focus on the (best?) Famous Five member, Timmy the dog. He is an integral part of the team, and this selection shows him standing guard over his human friends whilst they are all out on an adventure. Earlier, Timmy had been causing all kinds of trouble after getting stuck down a hole chasing rabbits! The dog is often a uniting force for the group, and one beloved of readers who longed to have pets of their own.

This is one of four typescripts by Blyton held by Seven Stories for the Famous Five; Five Have a Wonderful Time, Five Have Plenty of Fun and the play Famous Five Adventure. The collection also holds one unpublished novel (Mr Tumpy's Caravan), as well as drafts for numerous short stories published in magazines and newspapers.  Seven Stories also holds many of Blyton's diaries, both her personal diaries and her 'nature diaries', in which she documented developments in her garden and kept track of the weather. They both often feature her own pets, she had many cats and dogs over the years. She was a big lover of animals, and her beloved 'Bobs' the dog even wrote a few books of his own!

Find out more about the Seven Stories Blyton Collection here, where you can also see many more digitised pages of typescript.

Preliminary artwork for Time for Bed, Fred, by Yasmeen Ismail (Bloomsbury, 2013)

Our selected artwork this month are some gorgeous ruffs  roughs, created by illustrator Yasmeen Ismail. These vibrant and colourful pages are among several deposited with Seven Stories in 2013, and showcase a brilliant variety in the different kinds of dog which the book could have featured. We see a possible simple blue wash, black outline with a single colour wash, and a simple black outline, close the final look of our hero.

Time for Bed, Fred follows the story of a very mischievous dog who just won't go to bed. He gets himself in all kinds of trouble, jumping in puddles and hiding all over the place, but rest assured, he does find his bed in the end!

Ismail's archive at Seven Stories currently contains a small range of artwork for Inside Out, Upside Down, Specs for Rex, and If I had a Cat. There is also a range of advertising illustrations and commissions, including the Carnegie nominated title by Sarah Crossan Apple and Rain. Find out more about the Yasmeen in the Seven Stories Collection by clicking here.

This month’s printed book is Top Dog by Partap Sharma (with cover illustrations by Caroline Pickles) which was published by Andre Deutsch in 1985.

Partap Sharma's Top dog (Andre Deutsch, 1985)

Top Dog is a collection of short stories set in Bombay.  They are all about the author’s Alsatian dog called Ranjha, who was so skilfully trained in the art of tracking, that he became famous for the crimes he solved.  The stories “… are, in essence true.  The real-life dog, Ranjha, helped solve them.”  Intriguingly, the stories / cases are narrated by Ranjha so give a dog’s eye view of the world.

Top Dog is one of the ‘Armchair Travellers’ collection of 495 books which were donated by the Jayne Truran , Chair of St Albans Children's Book Group, to Seven Stories in 2008.  The collection was originally put together by Joyce Du Cane who was a school inspector and member of IBBY (The International Board on Books for Young People http://www.ibby.org.uk/ ). According to the donor, Joyce Du Cane “… travelled extensively and brought books back from all her journeys. She was very popular with the publishing world and one suspects that people gave her things when they knew about her collection… she devoted her life to the book group and her other charities. She was very philanthropic.”  Further books were added to Joyce Du Cane’s collection when a teacher training centre in Hertfordshire closed and moved to new premises, in the early 1990's.

The St Albans Children's Book Group ran for over 30 years, during the school summer holidays, the ‘Armchair Travellers’ book collection was made available for local children to borrow.  The St. Alban’s Children’s Book Group was in essence a forerunner of the ‘Summer Reading Challenge’ groups offered by local Public Libraries these days, who are keen (just as the St. Albans’ parents were) to keep children reading, and usefully occupied through the summer holidays.

The idea was that the children could ‘travel the world from the comfort of an armchair’.  Between 25 and 50 parents joined the book group each year and brought along their children to borrow books and for events.  On average 30-40 children would attend on a sunny day.  Past Chair, Jenny Stroud held the Armchair Traveller event for many years either in her home or her wonderful garden.  The books were displayed by Continents with each continent having its own table, or space in the garden if the weather was good.  (There were also sections of ‘Folk Tales’ and ‘Journeys’).  Each child had a ‘Passport’ and would get a ‘stamp’ in it for each continent they visited, by reading and rating a book telling a story from that continent.  So, a child reading Top Dog would receive a ‘stamp’ for India / Asia.

‘Armchair travelling’ was obviously a popular, enjoyable and worthwhile pursuit in St. Alban’s -not least for Jenny Stroud’s own son,  Jonathan, the children’s books author of Lockwood & Co. and the Bartimaeus Sequence!

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.

All About: Tigers

In celebration of our Tiger, Mog and Pink Rabbit: a Judith Kerr Retrospective exhibition opening at The Jewish Museum in London this month, we have a post looking at all the other terrifying tigers hiding in the Seven Stories Collection. If you want to find out more about Judith Kerr, and her archive held by Seven Stories, click here.

Cover artwork by Pat Marriott for Tiger Adventure, by Willard Price (Jonathan Cape, 1979) © Pat Marriott's Estate

This arresting cover illustration was created by Pat Marriott for the Adventure series by the North American novelist Willard Price. Hilary Hinckley, Marriott's niece, donated the full suite of illustrations in 2011, following the illustrator's death in 2002.

"At that time The London Zoo only opened on a Sunday morning to its 'members' and my brother and I used to accompany Pat. She studied and drew the animals, and developed a terrific facility to impart the essence of the creature through simple line drawings, the result of many hours of sketching." 

Hilary Hinkley, June 2011 in a letter written for the Seven Stories archive PM/03/02

Tiger Adventure is part of the 14 part book series by Willard Price. It follows two brothers, Hal and Roger Hunt, as they travel around the world capturing animals to return to the US and their father's wildlife collections. It was based on Price's love of adventure, he even went on expeditions for the National Geographic Society and the American Museum of Natural History! The series has been picked up again in recent years by Puffin, with Anthony McGowan commissioned to produce 3 new titles. In the new books, instead of capturing the animals, the protagonists are conservationists.

Marriott's archive also contains artwork for The Stolen Lake and Is by Joan Aiken, and preliminary artwork for two more books by Aiken. The two had a working friendship for over 40 years, and of Marriott's illustrations, Aiken writes:

"[She] has an absolutely magical gift for presenting landscapes and characters just as they were in my mind. She can get wonderful sympathy and terrific action and pace into her drawings of people... I can hardly envision them other than as Pat draws them." 

Joan Aiken, quote taken from joanaiken.com

Notes on the novel Tiger in the Well, Philip Pullman c. 1991 

© Philip Pullman

Our second 'tiger' this month is more of a metaphor, a page of notes from Philip Pullman, written during story development of one of the books in the Sally Lockhart quartet, Tiger in the Well. Key elements of the story shown here actually go on to be published under another title - The Tin Princess. The crucial passage shown above describes a central theme in the story:

What is the tiger? What is the well? A tiger in the well is when a terrible danger prevents your getting to something you need - you can't get to the water unless you take out the tiger but in doing so you may die. But if you don't you'll die anyway because there's only one well. 
So it's a riddle - a sort of Sufi koan.
What's the answer?
Leave the tiger where he is and drink wine.

Philip Pullman, notes on the novel Tiger in the Well, c. 1991

Pullman's archive was donated in 2002 and contains a collection of drafts, draft material and notes relating to fourteen of Philip Pullman's published titles for children.  There are notes and drafts for all other three books in the Sally Lockhart Quartet - The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tin Princess; and typescript drafts for the first two books in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman also donated material relating to several school plays he wrote when working as an English teacher in Oxford, four of which went on to be developed into full-length novels.

Dinner Time, by Jan Pienkowski, Anne Carter and Marcin Stajewski  James Roger Diaz (Walker Books, 2007)

Finally, this month’s feature book is Dinner time, illustrated by Jan Pienkowski and published by Walker Books in 2007.  The humorously dark text was written by Anne Carter, and the pop-ups were engineered by Marcin Stajewski and James Roger Diaz.  This book was originally published in 1981 and the fact that it has been reprinted and published in different  editions and formats several times since then is testament to its enduring popularity.

Dinner Time tells the story of six animals, a Tiger, a Gorilla, a Frog, a Crocodile, a Shark and a Vulture, who pop out at the reader and teach us about the food chain. Can you work out which order they might eat each other!

Jan Pienkowski has won the prestigious Kate Greenaway medal twice and illustrated and written hundreds of books. In 2009 Jan kindly donated this copy of Dinner Time to Seven Stories Collection along with 80 other books he has illustrated.  His collection includes many more pop-ups (some with sound effects), board books, sticker books, large format and mini editions, Touch & Feel, and Flap books, as well as many of the highly popular Meg and Mog books which he created along with author Helen Nicoll.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.

All About: Birds

This month we are all batty about birds! Taking a look again at an illustration, archival item and a book to explore three very different elements of our collection.

My bird alphabet, designed by Shyam Varma (Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1960)

This month’s book is My bird alphabet, designed by Shyam Varma and published by Hutchinson & Co. Ltd in 1960. This is one of several ‘Bird’ themed alphabet books to be found in ‘Pat Garrett’s ABC collection’ and is a good example of the sort of non-standard format books we hold.

The pages in this book concertina in/out from either side.  Most pages include an illustration of a named bird, and in common with many ABC books, the appropriate initial letter is given in both upper and lower case fonts. Some birds are very familiar (Duck and Hen) while others are probably less so - Ibis, Quail and even Xema! In the photo above you will see an interesting interpretation of the letters ‘A’ and ‘Z’:  ‘A’ is for Aviary "the home of the birds"; while ‘Z’ is for Zoo "where most birds are found".

Pat Garrett has been kindly donating duplicate copies of titles in her ABC book collection (as well as an extensive collection of Counting & Number books) to Seven Stories since 2008.  So far we have received 585 ABC books (mostly published between the 1930s and 2010), but this collection is still growing.  Whilst this collection consists predominantly of picture books, it also includes board books, cloth & bath books, friezes, and even activity books.

Final illustration from My Dad's a Birdman, written by David Almond and illustrated by Polly Dunbar. Illustration © Polly Dunbar, 2006

This month's artwork was created by Polly Dunbar, for David Almond's My Dad's a Birdman. Donated alongside Almond's early notes, playscripts and drafts of the text, this suite of illustrations represents a fascinating view into the  creation of a book. The compelling story and ability to see both sides of the development process -  the archive also includes Dunbar's preliminary sketches - means this is one of the most utilised archives with our Learning and Participation team. To see more of this archive, click here.

Dunbar donated the full suite of artwork and preliminary sketches for My Dad's a Birdman in December 2008, following Seven Stories purchase of two of the finished pieces of artwork in October of that year. Since then, we have also been happy to receive some more illustrated birds by Polly Dunbar, she contributed an illustration for 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' and 'I Had a Little Nut Tree' to the nursery rhymes anthology Over the Hills and Far Away. 

Penguin newsletter, August 1978

The final section of our monthly blog post is all about possibly the most famous birds of the children's book world - Puffins! One of the first major acquisitions by Seven Stories, in 1997, was the archive of the long term Editor-in-Chief of Puffin, Kaye Webb. It is a vast archive, with purchase being made possible with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Friends of the National Libraries. The archive covers Webb's career, with a huge amount on her almost 20 years with Puffin, correspondence between large numbers of authors and illustrators, diaries, scrapbooks, and thousands of books and ephemera.

Within the archive can also be found details of a great experiment, the creation and burial of the Puffin Time Capsule. Eagle eyed visitors to the Ouseburn visitor centre will remember that this time capsule is actually buried within the foundations of Seven Stories! The archive reveals more, detailing the messages from various Puffin authors, as well as Webb herself. The capsule was buried in August 1978 at the Puffin offices in London. When Puffin moved, it coincided wonderfully with the creation of Seven Stories, which was thought a very appropriate new guardian of the capsule.

The capsule is due to be uncovered in 2078, by which time we will find out if the specialist preservation techniques used on the books have been a success! To find out more about the guardians, visit their website here.

If you'd like to find out more about the Seven Stories Collection, then 

email: collections@sevenstories.org.uk or phone: 0191 495 2707 or comment on this blog.