Art of the New Naturalists: A Complete History. Peter Marren

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      To summarise the New Naturalist jacket:

      WINNING ROUND THE SCIENTISTS

      My book, The New Naturalists, describes in some detail how William Collins conceived this ground-breaking series of nature books, and the board of celebrity scientists which he set up to commission books and oversee their production. The committee was headed by Julian Huxley, perhaps then Britain’s best-known biologist, but the key personality on it was his energetic protégé, James Fisher. The young Fisher was full of fire about the advance of natural history in postwar Britain; he was in great demand for natural history radio programmes in the 1940s and ‘50s. He, perhaps more than the others, was convinced of the potential mass appeal of illustrated books on natural history and their importance in promoting interest in birds and other wildlife. He was later to become a great influence on natural history publishing, not least as a senior advisor and book commissioner for Collins.

      The idea of fancy jackets for the New Naturalist books appears to have originated in the mind of Ruth Atkinson, who joined the firm in 1943 and soon became a trusted advisor to the chairman, William (‘Billy’) Collins. During the 1930s she had worked as a book editor for Jonathan Cape where, among other things, she commissioned artists to design jackets. Clifford and Rosemary Ellis had been among her clients; she had been impressed by their work and, it seems, had already got to know them well. On 20 July 1944, Ruth wrote to the Ellises to tell them about the forthcoming series and ask whether they now felt ‘at all inclined to do book jackets’. The new books would have ‘a great many illustrations’, she went on, ‘and I thought that you would do lovely jackets for them.’ But, she warned, ‘there are a great many people whom the jacket must please: besides Mr Collins, the editorial committee of this series and the producers of it, Messrs Adprint.’ She invited them to ‘work out a rough, for say the first title’, and hoped to be able to discuss it further with them (RA to C&RE, 20.7.44).

      The Ellises’ response was to invite her to Bath for the weekend where, during a ‘deliciously comfortable and peaceful stay’, Ruth persuaded C&RE to try out a colour sketch for the jacket of Butterflies by E.B. Ford. As was to become the rule, she sent them some material and ‘pulls’ of plates from the book to provide an idea of its nature and contents. By September 1944, the artists had produced an arresting design based on the Swallowtail butterfly and its caterpillar, drawn at twice the size of the printed jacket. At the same time they had also, presumably at Ruth Atkinson’s request, produced alternative jacket designs, two of which incorporated a small photograph. Ruth especially liked those, but Billy Collins preferred the Swallowtail. (RA to C &RE, 18.9.44: ‘he likes the two without the photographs best–I like those with the photographs’). She added that Collins had liked the Ellises’ work ‘better than anything else which has been submitted’. Another artist had also been working on the New Naturalist jackets, ‘but he has had to give it up’ (RA to C&RE, 8.9.44); who that artist was we have been unable to discover.

      Jacket design, front and back cover, by C&RE for the King Penguin series, printed in four colours and published in 1946.

      Billy Collins had indeed liked the design. It is a fair guess that he had looked for an original and arresting style of jacket from the start and had given his blessing to Ruth’s apparently solo venture. Collins saw the job of the jackets to sell books, and hence they were his responsibility and not that of the New Naturalist Board, whose purpose was, rather, to achieve high and consistent scientific standards for the series. He ignored (though tactfully) the Board’s strongly expressed preference for photographic jackets, and invited the Ellises to design jackets for the first six books. They were offered 12 guineas per jacket and three guineas extra for the specially designed colophon. Their fees later rose more or less in line with inflation, but were always modest.

      The original colophon for the New Naturalist library, designed by c&re in 1944.

      The decision, therefore, to commission C&RE was made by Billy Collins alone and in the teeth of opposition. The (newly discovered) Board minutes grumpily note that ‘it had been agreed that Messrs Collins, knowing the Editors’ views on the subject, would be entirely responsible for the production of the Wrapper’ (NN Board, 9.9.45). ‘It really is a question of pleasing Mr Collins’, Ruth Atkinson had told the Ellises, ‘and not the naturalists’ (RA to C?, 17.10.44).

      The Board might have had a stronger case for a photographic jacket if they had some strong photographs to show. But in 1945, good colour photographs of wildlife in natural surroundings were still rare; nearly all the colour photographs in the first New Naturalist titles had to be commissioned specially with Adprint’s precious stocks of American Kodak. Butterflies included some ground-breaking shots of live butterflies taken in colour by Sam Beaufoy, but even so it is hard to find even one that would make a satisfactory book jacket.

      Early in 1945, James Fisher had been deputised by the Board to visit Clifford and Rosemary in Bath to find out more about their ideas and techniques. ‘I hope you get on well with Fisher and win him over to the idea of non-photographic jackets which will be a major achievement’, wrote Ruth to Clifford, perhaps a little nervously (RA to C ?, 22.1.45). Fisher, it seems, was indeed won over, but other members of the Board, especially Julian Huxley, Eric Hosking and John Gilmour, were not, at least not at first. Hosking, in particular, felt that the credo of the series, and its unique selling point of specially taken colour photographs, demanded a photographic jacket. After viewing the first few jackets, seemingly with tight lips, the Board gradually grew to admire them, and, by 1948, they were all full of praise for that of The Badger.

      For the time being, however, when advance copies of the first two New Naturalists lay on the table before them (with photographers invited in to record the occasion), this is all the minutes have to say about it: ‘Dr Huxley said he still did not like the idea of non-photographic wrappers but as he understood that it was impossible to change now, would it be possible for future volumes to try out some other artist as well?’ Eric Hosking suggested Jack Armitage as a possible alternative. John Gilmour asked that in future the editors, if not the authors, be shown the jacket designs before the books were printed, which Collins agreed to. He [i.e. Collins] added that ‘he was quite willing later on to try out some other artist but that no series of wrappers which Collins had produced had ever been so successful as these with booksellers and others, and that he was of the opinion that the artists who are designing them were first class and great experts’ (NN Board meeting, 15.11.45).

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