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It deepens like a coastal shelf
About Me
- Steerforth
- Lewes, East Sussex, England
- This is supposed to be a blog about books, but something went wrong...
Links
- A Penguin a Week
- Bookseller Crow
- Branches and Rain
- Caustic Cover Critic
- Chris Neill's Dirty Kitchen
- Christopher Butler
- Cultural Snow
- Desperate Reader
- Economy Custard
- Gaskella
- Grey Area
- Hats-n-Rabbits
- James Russell
- John Self
- Mrs Trefusis
- Ms Baroque
- Oliver's Poetry
- Peter Sipe
- The Art of Words
- The Dabbler
- The Dusty Bookcase
- The Poet Laura-eate
- Thomas at My Porch/Hogglestock
- zmkc
12 comments:
Ah yes, exactly how I remember it!
Amazing how concentrated the visual memory can be - I found a 1960 "Schoolboy's Diary" at a Boot Sale recently and it transported be immediately to my 12 year old self. I knew every inch of that diary. If the iPhone had been around at that time I'm sure my head would have actually exploded.
I love that 'romance' is a big sailing galleon. Wonderful.
Makes me want to be a boy again - and I wasn't even around in 1949.
Manly walks and striped blazers and rockets and racing cars and KITTENS?
Books like that inevitably include an injunction either to "be merry and gay" or to "show a bit of spunk", either of which, I regret to say, still makes me chuckle stupidly.
The images have changed but I think a boy's world has remained pretty constant.
When holidays and other lands were two different things...and when your manly javelin-thrower wore Damart.
Torpor! Gluttony! Negativity! Social Anxiety! Maybe just a (teenage) boy's world from my very limited perspective.
Love the colours and that ridiculous cat. 'Pets' may be one of the few categories I fully concur with.
Romance, thrills and adventure - I wonder what would have been on the equivalent girls album?
I'm glad that others have enjoyed these images as much as I did. Who wouldn't want to grow up in that world, even if the reality was rationing and drabness?
Like Tim, I also snigger at the 'spunky girls' who felt 'rather gay', but also miss a time when 'romance' could mean, as CB says, adventure on the high seas.
Lucy is obviously as jaundiced as me, because I came up with a similarly depressing 2012 version. In reality, the gap between 1949 and 2012 might not be as great as we think, but at least there was more scope for Enid Blyton adventures then.
A good point from Mike about the assumption that a holiday would be in Britain - when did that change? 1970?
The kittens seem rather out of place - surely a fine hunting dog?
The girls' version would have probably included crafts, recipes, schoolgirl mysteries, princesses, pony riding and, of course, kittens.
In 1949 holidays were youth hosteling or camping with your chum, but clearly not in 'other lands'.
This is this old girl's vintage, so I can comment.
The princess fixation had not yet started. That's a more recent economic construct.
A girl's version of this book would probably have included dolls and dolls' houses, embroidery, helping mother bake, possibly some hiking (in your Girl Guide uniform), and if you were lucky, a beach with bucket and spade for holidays.If Science was included, it would be illustrated by a table-top experiment somehow involving a glass of water. The kittens might remain for Pets, but would probably have a bow added.
Boys were allowed a wider range of experiences and bigger dreams. They still are, despite the slight improvements made since the 1970s.
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