The Living Village: A Report on Rural Life in England and Wales, Based on Actual Village Scrapbooks by Paul Jennings lands on the |> SALE <| shelves in my shop.
Hodder & Stoughton, 1969, Hardback in dust wrapper.
3rd impression. [First Edition: October, 1968] From the cover: For we are the people of England, and we have not spoken yet, wrote G. K. Chesterton in the poem The Secret People. This is an important, unique book, because in it the people do speak, in a simultaneous survey and celebration. It is written by the people themselves the people, to be more precise, of the villages of England and Wales. The main content of THE LIVING VILLAGE is a selection from the best of some 2,600 scrapbooks entered in a national competition to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the National Federation of Womens Institutes. Each scrapbook covered a year of village life. Young and old, men and women contributed. There are memories and hopes, fears and joys. The entire field of rural life in these transitional times is covered; the clash of new and traditional, the impact of the motor-car and TV, the decline of the railway, the mechanisation of farming, the commuter explosion, dialect, customs, recipes, the preservation, observation (and desecration) of nature, the changing educational system, youth services. Many of the scrapbooks are already in libraries, archives or universities, where they are prized as unrivalled records for the future. The form of the book is the clear and logical pattern imposed on this huge mass of material, enough for a modern Doomsday Book, by Paul Jennings, who travelled nearly 10,000 miles in its preparation and visited many of the villages concerned. In his narrative and commentary the keenness of observation, distinction of style, wit and humour, and perhaps above all that sense of wonder in ordinary things that made him famous as an essayist are now applied to this great modern pastoral. We think he has shown that those two words are not a contradiction in terms. .
Introduction by: Shirley Anglesey
Very Good in Very Good Dust Wrapper. A little rubbing to the edges of the dust wrapper which is slightly tanned.
Grey boards with Gilt titling to the Spine.
252 pages. 8¾” x 5¾”.
This book will be listed, sooner or later, for £6.50 on my delightful website… (added to my Social History category.) but get 50% off buying from my blog… below…
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