Print for Victory: Book Publishing in England 1939‐1945

Citation

Ray, S. (2010), "Print for Victory: Book Publishing in England 1939‐1945", Library Review, Vol. 59 No. 4, pp. 307-308. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531011038622

As someone who grew up during the Second World War and interested in history, I found this book fascinating. Books and the printed word were seen as vital to the winning of the war. As Winston Churchill said, “Books in all their variety offer the means whereby civilization may be carried triumphantly forward”. Although both paper and manpower were in short supply, books, pamphlets and leaflets could provide information, education, relaxation and generally boost morale as well as being useful for propaganda purposes. The Americans were reluctant to take up arms and the British authorities wanted not only their moral support but actual participation in the war and books were seen as a way of persuading them away from their isolationist policy. British authors were sent to America and Jan Struther, the author of Mrs Miniver, scored a particular success.

Print for Victory: Book Publishing in England 1939‐1945, a title reminiscent of the famous wartime slogan “Dig for victory”, is divided into four chapters – “Britain needs books” (1939‐1941), “Publishing and the state” (1942‐1943), “Readers overseas” (1940‐1945) and “Publishing for peace” (1944‐1945). The research that has gone into the book has been very thorough, investigating national archives, library and university special collections, the archives of publishers and booksellers, wartime ephemera and the resources of many organisations, such as the Red Cross. These are fully listed in the Acknowledgements.

The result is an overview of how publishing was affected by the war and how it generated cultural change. People read more and the sources of books were many – civilians at home, for whom other entertainment was limited, prisoners of war on both sides, men of the Home Guard, firemen and firewatchers, and others on duty or in air raid shelters had to be catered for. Many small libraries were set up, often using donated books.

As a note on the dust jacket claims, this is the first in‐depth study of British publishing (the England of the sub‐title is misleading as the book deals with publishing worldwide, although the emphasis is on the UK and English‐speaking countries). Facts are carefully referenced and, for me, an advantage is that the notes appear on the same page as the text to which reference is made. This saves much shuffling backwards and forwards and is especially useful as there is often interesting additional information included in the notes.

There are 13 appendices of useful facts ranging from one on “A non‐fiction bestseller, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf to another on the cost of living”. A bibliography and index complete the book.

For a book so densely packed with facts, Print for Victory: Book Publishing in England 1939‐1945 is surprisingly readable and I enjoyed coming across some of the information that is included. I have recently been recalling my schoolgirl memories of Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber (1944) for a younger generation and I was interested to come across an account of its best‐selling status (400,000 copies sold worldwide in the two months after its publication in America), the fact that at first no British publisher would take it (too long and too successful for a country short of paper/novel's raunchy subject‐matter), although it was published by a new imprint in the UK later in 1944, and that its export to Australia was prohibited in 1945. All this told me a lot that I didn't know at the time. Although little is said specifically about children's books, which had to cater for a “vastly increased” readership, a report of the current state of the publishing trade in relation to coming demands (1944), revealed that “At any one time the publishers' orders for the well‐known Arthur Ransome books are more than three times what he can supply”. It's good to know that the first winner of the Library Association's Carnegie Medal was so highly regarded and popular in wartime Britain. Other readers may enjoy their own serendipitous moments.