The Saturday Book was an annual miscellany, published from 1941 to 1975, reaching 34 volumes. It was edited initially by Leonard Russell and from 1952 by John Hadfield. A final compilation, The Best of the Saturday Book, was published in 1981. [1] The publisher throughout was Hutchinson's.
The Saturday Book provided literary and artistic commentary about life in Britain during the Second World War and the ensuing decades. It covered a range of arts, including ballet and music. Many writers contributed poems as well as essays.
The very first volume totaled 444 pages, but, with paper in short supply, the length of the second was slashed to 274 pages. From the third to the 24th volumes the number fluctuated between 288 and 304 pages, but the remaining ten ran to no more than 256 pages each, with the last one dropping to 240 pages.
In 2002 Nekta Publications published What's Where in The Saturday Books: A Comprehensive Guide and Index by Peter Rowland, 154 pages long, which provides an index and guide to the whole series. [2]
The many writers who contributed to the series included Fred Bason, H. E. Bates, John Betjeman, Graham Greene, Laurie Lee, Philip Larkin, John Masefield, H. J. Massingham, George Orwell, J. B. Priestley, L. T. C. Rolt, Siegfried Sassoon, Evelyn Waugh, John Moore and P. G. Wodehouse.
The series was profusely illustrated with photographs, woodcuts and line drawings, many specially commissioned. Artists included Edward Ardizzone, Rowland Emett, L. S. Lowry, Laurence Scarfe and Richard Chopping. Photographers included Bill Brandt, Cecil Beaton, Douglas Glass and Edwin Smith. Wood engravers included Robert Gibbings, George Mackley and Agnes Miller Parker.
George Orwell's essay "Benefit of Clergy", intended for the volume published in 1944, was suppressed on grounds of obscenity, but its title remains in the table of contents. [3]
Eric Arthur Blair, known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel writing. In 1959 he was the founding editor of the journal Canadian Literature which was the first academic journal specifically dedicated to Canadian writing. He is most commonly known outside Canada for his book Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962).
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA, was an English critic, literary historian, editor, teacher, and wine connoisseur. He is regarded as a highly influential critic of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Kenneth Lewis Roberts was an American writer of historical novels. He worked first as a journalist, becoming nationally known for his work with the Saturday Evening Post from 1919 to 1928, and then as a popular novelist. Born in Kennebunk, Maine, Roberts specialized in regionalist historical fiction, often writing about his native state and its terrain and also about other upper New England states and scenes. For example, the main characters in Arundel and Rabble in Arms are from Kennebunkport, the main character in Northwest Passage is from Kittery, Maine and has friends in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the main character in Oliver Wiswell is from Milton, Massachusetts.
Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet of Applegarth FRS FRSE FLS FSA was a Scottish naturalist. He is known for his editing of a long series of natural history books, The Naturalist's Library.
The Gentleman's Magazine was a monthly magazine founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term magazine for a periodical. Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine.
Charles Wrey Gardiner was an English writer and poet, editor and publisher, born in Plymouth.
Ernest William Hornung was an English author and poet known for writing the A. J. Raffles series of stories about a gentleman thief in late 19th-century London. Hornung was educated at Uppingham School; as a result of poor health he left the school in December 1883 to travel to Sydney, where he stayed for two years. He drew on his Australian experiences as a background when he began writing, initially short stories and later novels.
Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet CH was an English writer. His elder sister was Edith Sitwell and his younger brother was Sacheverell Sitwell. Like them, he devoted his life to art and literature.
The Listener was a weekly magazine established by the BBC in January 1929 which ceased publication in 1991. The entire digitised archive was made available for purchase online to libraries, educational and research institutions in 2011.
Current Biography is an American monthly magazine published by the H. W. Wilson Company of The Bronx, New York, a publisher of reference books, that appears every month except December. Current Biography contains profiles of people in the news and includes politicians, athletes, businessmen, and entertainers. Published since 1940, the articles are annually collected into bound volumes called Current Biography Yearbook. A December issue of the magazine is not published because the staff works on the final cumulative volume for the year. Articles in the bound volumes correct any mistakes that may have appeared in the magazine and may include additional relevant information about the subject that became available since publication of the original article. The work is a standard reference source in American libraries and the publisher keeps in print the older volumes. Wilson also issues cumulative indexes to the set, and an online version is available as a subscription database.
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn. The journal was unsuccessful and Blackwood fired Pringle and Cleghorn and relaunched the journal as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine under his own editorship. The journal eventually adopted the shorter name and from the relaunch often referred to itself as Maga. The title page bore the image of George Buchanan, a 16th-century Scottish historian, religious and political thinker.
Australia in the War of 1939–1945 is a 22-volume official history series covering Australian involvement in the Second World War. The series was published by the Australian War Memorial between 1952 and 1977, most of the volumes being edited by Gavin Long, who also wrote three volumes and the summary volume The Six Year War.
Fredric John Warburg was a British publisher best known for his association with the author George Orwell. During a career spanning a large part of the 20th century and ending in 1971, Warburg published Orwell's major books Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), as well as works by other leading figures such as Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Other notable publications included The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa, Pierre Boulle's The Bridge over the River Kwai, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
The Fortnightly Review was one of the most prominent and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,000; the first edition appeared on 15 May 1865. George Henry Lewes, the partner of George Eliot, was its first editor, followed by John Morley.
The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, novels and non-fiction books written by the British writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), either under his own name or, more usually, under his pen name George Orwell. Orwell was a prolific writer on topics related to contemporary English society and literary criticism, who has been declared "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture." His non-fiction cultural and political criticism constitutes the majority of his work, but Orwell also wrote in several genres of fictional literature.
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí is an autobiography by the internationally renowned artist Salvador Dalí published in 1942 by Dial Press. The book was written in French and translated into English by Haakon Chevalier. It covers his family history, his early life, and his early work up through the 1930s, concluding just after Dalí's return to Catholicism and just before the global outbreak of the Second World War. The book is over 400 pages long and contains numerous detailed illustrations. It has attracted both editorial praise as well as criticism, notably from George Orwell.
William Davenport Adams was an English journalist, drama critic, and author. He was the son of the prolific author William Henry Davenport Adams, and his wife and two sisters also wrote.
"Good Bad Books" is an essay by George Orwell first published in Tribune on 2 November 1945. After Orwell's death, the essay was republished in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (1950).
Critical Essays (1946) is a collection of wartime pieces by George Orwell. It covers a variety of topics in English literature, and also includes some pioneering studies of popular culture. It was acclaimed by critics, and Orwell himself thought it one of his most important books.