British Book Publishing and Wartime

What happened to British book publishing during wartime in the 1940s?

I’d never given it much thought until I realized the iconic photo of the Blitz and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London really isn’t about St. Paul’s not burning down.

It’s about one million books going up in flames, or as The Bookseller wrote on January 1, 19141, “it was a crematorium for books.”

Booksellers had been working their trade around St. Paul’s since Shakespeare’s day. On December 29, warehouses went up in smoke and countless publishers were put out of business.

The Oswald Chambers Publication Association was affected, as I’ve written here.

But all publishers were effected. Here some surprising facts about books and wartime, at least in England during World War II.

Wartime Paper Rationing

Of course paper had to be rationed, just like everything else. Several things caused this in England.

1. Inaccessibility of raw materials for manufacturing

When France fell in June 1940, Great Britain lost access to the raw material needed to make paper that came from France and French North Africa.

Publishing houses were at first limited to 65% of the paper they used during 1939. By 1941, that percentage had decreased to 35% of usage. Books were becoming hard to get!

2. Government needed the paper

Regulations, ration cards, army training manuals, signs, you name it. By the end of WWII, the British government used twice as much paper as commercial publishers.

  3. Manpower shortages

Both the producers of paper and printers themselves, young men in particular, were called up to serve in the armed forces.

Change in Reading Habits

British citizens were not particularly great readers prior to the start of the war but with blackout requirements, that all changed.

Once the sun went down, with streetlights turned off, headlights shrouded, bomb damage in the streets, signposts removed, it was dangerous to travel at night.

The flare of a match produced dangerous light.

Hours spent listening to the crump of exploding bombs while waiting in air raid shelters or deep in underground stations meant plenty of time to read for some.

(Many people knit because not only were socks always needed, but knitting could be done in dim light).

Wartime Reading Material

With war looming in 1939, the most popular book was Mein Kampf. Obviously, British readers wanted to understand what the madman across the Channel thought.

Other favorites included John Gunther’s Inside Asia, another international book of interest in a war that was spanning the globe, along with Gone with the Wind and How Green was My Valley.

The most requested novel in 1942 London? War and Peace.

Soldiers recovering in hospital and locked in POW camps also wanted books to read. The Red Cross stepped in to provide in a massive effort.

Remember, however, paper quality had deteriorated and paperbacks generally only lasted through 20 readings at most. The demand never let up.

Popular authors in German POW camps according to Print for Victory: novels by Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Somerset Maugham, John Buchan and Naomi Jacobs. Toward war’s end, biographies, thrillers, detective fiction and books on gardening, agriculture and architecture were in high demand.

C. S. Lewis and J.R. R. Tolkien compiled an honors-level degree course in English and volunteered to mark examination scripts sent from German POW camps!

German kommandants paid attention to the books that entered their camps, particular the popular escape narrative from WWI: H.G. Durnford’s The Tunnellers of Holzminden.

Managing the Stock

Books publishers were in the business of selling books and making money. They had to be careful which books to publish–in part because the British government’s War Risk Insurance was very expensive and based on the value of stock on hand–not whether it was selling .

For the Oswald Chambers Publishing Association with its tiny catalogue, the members made the sensible decision to focus on keeping My Utmost for His Highest in stock as best they could.

Demand for the book came in from around the globe, including from Germany (where it had been translated into German in the mid-1930s).

As the small group–no more than seven–wrestled with publishing decisions and scrambled with paper shortages and quality, they managed to keep their small publishing ministry producing books throughout the war.

(By 1951, the eleven year-old Finnish translation of My Utmost for His Highest, had sold 31,000 copies in a small country of 4 million people who had spent more than half that period at war.)

They managed, like all the big houses, to meet their public’s reading need–both for entertainment and spiritual growth.

Tweetables

How did British publishers manage during WWII? Click to Tweet

Mein Kampf as London’s 1939 best seller? Click to Tweet

Paper shortages, blackouts and WWII London. Click to Tweet