Valediction No.12: More Raverat

Brian Alderson is saying goodbye to his books as he donates his remarkable collection of children’s books to Seven Stories. Here he bids farewell to another prized book, illustrated by Gwen Raverat.

As one volume in two parts The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children, a collection of some 148 poms and verses was first published in 1916. Grahame’s wife writes of his ‘lavishing much loving labour’ on it and his biographer notes that it must have taken more than three years to compile. In his  Preface, he concerns himself with the various limitations imposed on the anthologist who has children (whom he takes to be early teenagers) as readers  – such things  as ‘the need to provide only simple examples of the whole range of English poetry’ or the avoidance of blank verse and the  unapproachability of seventeenth or eighteenth century poetry through its language and classical references. The book thus turns out to be something of an anthology of Victorian writing. Morag Styles’s ‘Garden’ predominates mightily over ‘Street’ and offers the reader ‘a wicket-gate’, as Grahame puts it (lyrics on the countryside, on homely things, on fantasy and faery, and on adventure). There is not much rough and tumble (no Lear, for instance) and no resort to what would be natural attractions such as anonymous ballads and the more genteel versions of folk verses.

There were few rivals on this scale at the time of the first edition but there was a violent change in the poetic weather in the twenties. It was hardly likely that there would be any ‘making it new’ for anthologies by Grahame or Cambridge (Auden and Garrett’s The Poet’s Tongue would not be far over the horizon) but the University Press was unwilling to lose its classic, if quasi-Victorian, collection and decided on a refurbishing job.

From its brief addition to the original Preface it looks as though the editing had passed to Grahame’s loyal if unhappy wife, Elspeth – an understandable move since he was in failing health and was becoming increasingly reclusive. She gave the contents a slightly more modern touch by adding some poems by Hardy, Bridges, W.H.Davies and A.A.Milne and surely sneaked in ‘Christmas Trees’ , the little 2-stanza poem that he had written for Alistair, the son who had died in 1920. He probably never even saw the proofs of the finished book for he had died suddenly overnight on 5 July[1]. and Elspeth’s short additional Preface carries a September date.

in all probability it was Lewis, the printer, who brought a continuing future to the collection through commissioning Raverat’s fifty-four wood engravings that were printed from the blocks in the first run of 5,200 copies (thereafter they were converted to stereos). Not only had she been brought up in Victorian Cambridge, a childhood so wonderfully described in Period Piece, but would have known Lewis well through his positive association with the Society of Wood Engravers. The illustrations were well-spaced throughout the text, rarely with gaps between them of more than two leaves and while twenty or so were tiny (say 20×25 mm. or so) that served only to heighten their intensity.

Whether it was Grahame’s selection or Raverat’s engravings that sustained the book in print, trade records here indicate that it lasted at least until 1967 by which time the engravings would have been replaced by the stereos. However, some thirty printings of each block would have been printed for separate sale and the blocks themselves would pass into the ownership of the Press.

Brian Alderson is a long-time and much-valued contributor to Books for Keeps, founder of the Children’s Books History Society and a former Children’s Books Editor for The Times. His most recent book The 100 Best Children’s Books is published by Galileo Publishing, 978-1903385982, £14.99 hbk.

‎The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children edited by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Gwen Raverat, is available from Legare Street Press, 978-1015851993, £14.95 pbk.

Reference

Joanna Selborne & Lindsay Newman.Gwen Raverat wood engraver.Denby Dale: Fleece Press, 1996 A trade edition was published in 2003 in London by the British Library and in New Castle, Delaware by the Oak Knoll Press.

Kenneth Grahame ed. The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children. New Edition. With an unpublished poem by the Editor and illustrations by GWEN RAVERAT [vig of child reading] Cambridge at the University Press, 1932. 20x12mm.  xvi,236pp. Imprint: Printed by W. Lewis M.A. at the University Press. Full turquoise cloth titling in black to front within a blue decoration, with reproductions of four blocks at corners. Pale yellow dust jacket with repeat of block on p.36 [‘A bumpy ride in a wagon of hay’] in titling to front. Flaps blank save for price of 6s. Net. Prov.  Bookseller’s ticket: ‘Divan’ Book and Artshop. Jerusalem, Opp. Cinema Zion.P.O.B.167

[1]The legal deposit copy sent to the British Museum has the acquisition date of 31 October 1932