Attempted Bloggery: Down with Skool!

Showing posts with label Down with Skool!. Show all posts

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Down with Skool Signed by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle

It's uncommon to find a copy of Down With Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and Their Parents (1953) signed by both the author Geoffrey Willans (1911-1958) and the illustrator Ronald Searle (1920-2011). The book, shown here in a recent bookseller listing, dates from the first Molesworth's book's second printing. It has considerable foxing and wear, while of course it lacks a dust jacket. Given all that, the offering price was probably reasonable.

Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
AbeBooks listing ended September 23, 2020

https://www.abebooks.com/DOWN-SKOOL-Guide-School-Life-Tiny/30749358561/bd?cm_ven=nl&cm_cat=trg&cm_pla=want_CM&cm_ite=viewbook

03405

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Ronald Searle: An Autographed Cartoon from Down with Skool!

Down with Skool!: A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and Their Parents was first published in 1953. Geoffrey Willans had originally created Nigel Molesworth, the Curse of St. Custard's, in the pages of Punch. Nigel's trenchant observations of prep school life and later of the world around him were written in schoolboy language with idiosyncratic schoolboy spelling. Willans and illustrator Ronald Searle collaborated on a total of four Molesworth books that were widely enjoyed in England and elsewhere. History For Sale offers a newsprint cartoon from Down with Skool!, the first of the Molesworth books, autographed by Searle in 1973. The cartoon in question is from Chapter 2, "Boo to Sir, or, Are Masters Nesessessary?" It is part of a Pythagorean proof by Nigel ("Proposition: Masters Are Sloppy and Like Gurls") that appears on page 29.