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The New Naturalist Library is today a highly renowned series of publications, but in 1945, the idea was so radical that it was widely expected to be a flop. The innovative ideas behind this groundbreaking series were simple: package natural history in a readable, attractive way, and the lay reader would respond to it. Thanks to recent innovations by Kodak, it was the first to make heavy use of outdoor color photography. Earlier publications used only monochrome plates, usually of dead specimens, or caged animals. The New Naturalist series used photos from life, and Collins soon became a leader in the field. Publisher William A.R. Collins and author James Fisher were two of the driving forces on the New Naturalist creative team. Collins was forward thinking enough to undertake this innovative approach to science publishing, taking a great commercial risk in the process. The color printing alone represented a significant investment, but Collins was confident that a market for this type of publication was there.
The New Naturalist series found a way to present the latest discoveries in easy, everyday language. Always on the forefront of modern science, the series picked up on new scientific fields quickly; Pesticides and Pollution arrived in 1967, and Nature Conservation in Britain came out in 2001.
This new edition includes many additions to the 1995 publication. Marren has added a new chapter about the last ten years of publication, elaborating on the 14 titles published in that time. He has also completely reworked the appendices, a Biography of the authors, Bibliography, and Collector’s Guide. The color plates were revised to include more jacket artwork, and a series of notes have been added to the text. The fascinating story of a fascinating series, this book is essential for anyone who has an
interest in the New Naturalist Library, or in the evolution of popular Natural History.
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The New Naturalists: Half a Century of British Natural History. Second edition. Peter Marren. HarperCollins, 2005. The "behind-the-bookshelf" story of the New Naturalist Library - who the authors were and what they did; how each title was conceived and received; the much admired jackets; and the trials, tribulations and triumphs of what has been described as the most significant and long-running natural history series in the world. 363 pp. Cloth - $75.00; Paper - $45.00
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Buteo Books also has many of the original New Naturalist titles available for sale. Contact us if
you are looking for a specific title.
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JOIN OUR MAILING LIST OR E-MAIL LIST Send an e-mail to customerservice@buteobooks.com with the subject Mailing List and let us know if you would like to receive our monthly e-newsletters and/or our print catalogs, which are mailed every four months. |
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James Fisher was an author with progressive ideas. His book Watching Birds was published in 1940.
At a time when more people were shooting birds than watching them, Fisher’s book encouraged people to
put down the skins and stuffed specimens, leave the laboratories and go outside to observe life in
situ. This was the New Naturalist; the amateur field naturalist who studied nature to better enjoy it
and to better caretake it. This series not only educated, but helped shape a popular interest in
British field natural history and conservation. Their hard work was justified in 1945, when the first
publication in the series, Butterflies, by E.B. Ford, became an instant bestseller.
To celebrate this original series, Peter Marren has compiled a complete history of the New
Naturalist Library, from its inception in 1942 to the most current publications. He reports the
earliest seeds of its creation, and the great pains its creators took to get it off the ground. He
tells the stories of the authors whose expertise informed the amateur, the ground-breaking
photographers, and the artists, whose dust jacket images were works of art in themselves. This book
includes countless color plates, which show us early sketches in the evolution of the jacket artwork.
It describes E.B. Ford’s collecting expeditions, which led to the publication of Butterflies, and
reports on the manuscripts that never made it to press.