Michael Brooke has “a post up today about Ladybird books”:http://www.michaelbrooke.com/2004/09/ladybird-rarities.html and their value to collectors. This sent my scurrying to look for an old post of mine on the subject from back when I was Junius. It had disappeared from the archives! I eventually managed to locate the source in blogger and republish — so “here it is”:http://junius.blogspot.com/2003_01_05_junius_archive.html#390156623 — but I wonder how much else has faded out of existence due to the general flakiness of blogger. Anyway it was one of my favourite posts, and resulted in “an interesting reaction by Kieran”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000224.html . An important moment in the prehistory of Crooked Timber.
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marek 09.27.04 at 11:28 pm
And not just history – the history shaded into biography, but beyond that, much of my basic understanding of how things work, from the internal combustion engine to weather systems, as well as grounding in skills such as map reading, came from Ladybirds.
For my peak Ladybird reading years, the price was always 2/6. On decimalisation, they went correctly to 12½p – and I still remember the deep shock I felt not long afterwards when suddenly they were 15p. I felt personally betrayed by my suddenly reduced purchasing power – a first lesson in the wider consequences of inflation.
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