Books in the Blitz-Some Lost Cannot be Reprinted

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 206, 1 September 1941, Page 6

Books in the Blitz-Some Lost Cannot be Reprinted

IT is known that English publishers have suffered grievously in the war from tlie air, and especially in the raid at the end of December last, when such havoc was wrought in the traditional home of the publishing trade near St. Paul's. Millions of books have been destroyed. Hut. English publishers are just, as determined to carry on business as are other trades'and their catalogues show that despite direct enemy action and restrictions on raw material an astonishing number of books are coining from the presses. By Cyrano Of that. December disaster I have just had a reminder that has a personal as well as a general interest. It is a brief printed report on its effects on one of the most famous of English publishing houses, Longmans, Green and Company. Here is a picture of the gutted premises of the firm in Paternoster Row, and my mind goes back some years to a visit I paid to the house. Paternoster Row and Amen Corner are names well known all over the English-speaking world, and I must have been one of millions of boys who wondered at them when they saw them on their school books. Now I was actually going to do business in Paternoster Row.

A very narrow street, it. was, in the shadow of St. Paul's, so narrow that it took only one-way car traffic. It was perhaps the most historical spot in the English publishing world, for "even before the printed word was sold there, scriveners plied their trade of writing manuscripts, and such names as Ave Maria Lane. Amen Corner and Paternoster Row recall the religious processions which in early days proceeded around the sacred area of St. Paul's Churchyard, and possibly the tracts which were sold there."

Years ago the geographical centre of the publishing trade began to move west, but many famous houses remained in the Row and of these Longmans was the oldest. For nearly two and a quarter centuries it had stood in the How. The Great Fire of 16G6 destroyed the whole area, but the publishers returned to new premises three years afterwards.

A Series of Losses

Lonpnians' experience in the last two years may be cited to show the risks the trade has been facing. Plans for war conditions had been made beforehand and when war came the administrative offices were moved to .the suburbs. While the warehouse for all bound stock remained in the Row. a considerable quantity of unbound stock was housed in a reserve warehouse elsewhere. It is the practice of the trade to keep stocks of unbound sheets and bind them as they are needed. What this means in a big business is shown by figures given by Dents, publishers of the Everyman Library. Fifteen years ago this firm had five million unbound volumes in stock.

Longmans' troubles began when a delayed action bomb fell near St. Paul's. Then the premises next door were destroyed by a bomb. Then their binding works were put. out of action for some weeks. In the great incendiary attack of Christmas week, 1940, not only were the Paternoster Row premises completely gutted, but the reserve warehouse was also destroyed. "On Saturday. December 28. Longmans could offer the reading public a choice between 5000 and 6000 books on their list—on Monday, 30th, there remained out 12." But this was not all. A note is added that since these facts were set down the firm's emergency warehouse has again been destroyed by enemy action and much of the stock damaged by water. Old Books Other publishing firms suffered in these attacks and no doubt, like Longmans, immediately set about building up their business again. The experiences of the trade suggest some thoughts on the loss to the community through the destruction of books by modern methods of warfare. There is a healthy disposition in England not to make too much fuss about the destruction of property. In material and sentimental value private loss is enormous, but much of what has been destroyed, such as buildings, can be replaced by something better. The irreplaceable things include historic or beautiful buildings, works of art and certain books. The total destruction of the British Museum Library (some of its contents have been lost.) or the Bodleian at Oxford would be a national calamity, but there are so many great libraries that unless Britain were conquered and her collections destroyed in the process there could hardly be a repetition of the blow to culture caused by the destruction of the libraries in oldtime Alexandria. Even then there would be the libraries in the United States.

Nor is the destruction of old books necessarily a very grave matter, for the contents of many of them have been squeezed pretty dry, copies may •exist elsewhere, and some of them, such as the Shakespeare First Folio, exist in facsimile. The new method of taking copies by photograph is an important advance in the distribution and protection of knowledge. It may be heresy to say so, but I can never get as excited as some people do about first editions. Would Shakespearean scholarship suffer if all First Folios disappeared? Of the two hundred copies known to exist, the famous Folger Library in the United States has seventy-nine, which seems to me one of the oddest forms of collecting, as if a very wealthy man used one RollsRoyce and kept a fleet of the same car for show.

Out of Print Perhaps the most serious aspect of the present destruction is the loss of stocks of scholarly volumes and works of reference which cannot profitably be reprinted. This is an j unspectacular side of publishing of which the public know little. A (publisher will take a scholar's book knowing that at. best it will sell I slowly over a long period, and print it accordingly. The stocks of many of these books have gone. Longmans say that many of the books that have helped to make the firm famous will never again be sold. There is. however, something more vital than the fate of English book stocks and libraries in this war. That is the future of the writer whether he is to be free or a slave. If Germany were to win this war there would be no freedom of the ! pen in Europe. If Hitler did not I deliberately destroy the books he ; disliked, he would see to it that no .more were written. What would it | profit an English writer working in the British Museum Library if he had Hitler's censor at his elbow 9 It •would lie better to be bookless than 'to Iv enslaved. j