LIBRAL adds 15 volumes, spanning c.1800-1944
Elections have badly impeded LIBRAL over the past couple of months, but good to say the scanner’s assistant was happily re-elected. Here, before the second election of the year, is the LIBRAL circulation you should have had before the last election containing the usual mixture of the known and unknown. We now have over 1,250 items in the Library, classified into more than 200 categories.
Some particular themes emerge out of our madness.
We have John Galt’s Annals of the Parish (1821), the memoirs of the parish’s minister, Rev. Micah Balwhidder. This is the fictionalised account of the village of Dalmailing in Ayrshire during the period 1760-1810. We would not claim this to be a work of history: but as a novel it contains a larger truth and a perception of the recent past. We also have Savory’s Grain and chaff from an English manor (1920), his account of Aldington near Evesham: part local history, part reminiscence, a very full account of the village, agriculture and village society before the First World War.
We are grateful to Chris Clough for two Ransomes catalogues from his late father’s collection. One is for the African export market. They are, to say the least, hard to date probably because they were intended to have a long life, so let us just say inter-war. We also have one of the many volumes issued by the fuel and lubricant manufacturers, on this occasion Shell Mex and BP, on Modern Farm Machinery (again undated but 1930s).
Different again is the survey of Scottish agriculture in the First World War produced under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1926).
We have two inter-war surveys of agriculture: an early review of Sugar Beet growing in East Anglia in 1929 and a study of Poor Land Arable Farming chiefly in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire by S. M. Makings (1944, but based on pre-war surveys). For manuals rather than surveys, we have Doyle on Small Farms and how they ought to be managed (?1855) and Long’s Book of the Pig (third edn, ?1916).
General View of the month is Tuke on the North Riding.
Enjoy! There is more on the way.
New on LIBRAL in June 2024
