The Ladybird Gallery: The Museum of English Rural Life, The University of Reading

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Link 1: The Ladybird Gallery: The Museum of English Rural Life, The University of Reading

 

Ladybird books were first produced during the First World War by Wills & Hepworth, a jobbing printer. Initially they were simply children's story books but after the Second World War the firm started to produce educational books which increased sales enormously. Remarkably, the price stayed the same at 2s 6d from 1945 to 1971, a feat achieved by strict production rules and increasingly large print runs.

 

The collection comprises 700 boxes of original artwork, proofs and some documentation from the 1940s to the 1990s, including examples of the work of notable artists such as C.F. Tunnicliffe, Rowland Hilder and Allen Seaby. The collection covers the wide range of subjects Ladybird published, ranging from What to Look for in Spring to Transformers: Laserbeak's Fury.

 

The collection also contains an incomplete collection of over c. 1,000 Ladybird books.

 

Link 2: Chronological, title and illustrator lists are available at the Special Collections Service [Presentation: 213 page PDF]