John Lehmann Ltd. (London, UK)
Series dates: 1948-1951
Size: 4.75″ x 7″
Updates 11/8/2024
A short-lived post-WW2 series of 21 titles. Lehmann had been a Hogarth Press managing director until 1946, when he started his own firm. Lehmann had edited the New Hogarth Library for Hogarth Press before the war. Titles in the series seem to be drawn from an array of literary fiction and biographies published by different authors, primarily in the pre-WW2 era, most likely titles that had not been reprinted.
Robert Westerby’s Wide Boys Never Work is a novel about the pre-WW2 criminal underground in London. As with all the Holiday Library titles, a common jacket design is used, with a summary of the title on the front jacket flap. The price is 6s. The first publication in the Holiday Library for this title is 1948.
A listing of the initial 12 titles is on the back of the jacket.
Bindings are blue cloth with gold and red decorations.
The half-title page indicates the series name.
The title page indicates the author, title, and publisher.
The original first publishing date and first published date in the Holiday Library are noted on the copyright page.
A copy of Rose Macaulay’s Orphan Island (first published in the Holiday Library, 1951) includes 9 additional titles. All were printed. A few reprints appear through 1952.
The Holiday Library
The Holiday Library is a new series of modern reprints. It consists of outstanding works of fiction, biography and autobiography, together with occasional works of general interest published during the past thirty years. In a number of cases the text has been specially revised for the new edition. The first twenty-one titles, published at 6s., are:
1. Going Abroad, by Rose Macaulay (1948)
2. Wide Boys Never Work, by Robert Westerby (1948)
3. A Note In Music, by Rosamond Lehmann (1948)
4. Vincent: A Life Of Vincent Van Gogh, by Julius Meier-Graefe (1948)
5. From A View To A Death, by Anthony Powell (1948)
6. I Live Under A Black Sun, by Edith Sitwell (1948)
7. They Drive by Night, by James Curtis (1948)
8. Julian Probert, by Susan Ertz (1948)
9. Death Of My Aunt, by C.H.B. Kitchin (1949)
10. All Summer In A Day, by Sacheverell Sitwell (1949)
11. The Five Mutineers, by James (‘Limey’) Spenser (1949)
12. Mary Olivier, by May Sinclair (Double Vol., 8S. 6D.) (1949)
13. The Beast Must Die, by Nicholas Blake (1949)
14. Delay In The Sun, by Anthony Thorne (1949)
15. Orphan Island, by Rose Macaulay (1951)
16. Cheerful Weather For The Wedding, by Julia Strachey (1950)
17. Frank Harris: A Biography, by Hugh Kingsmill (1949)
18. Plagued, by The Nightingale, by Kay Boyle (1951)
19. Now East, Now West, by Susan Ertz (1950)
20. Pylon, by William Faulkner (1950)
21. Thank Heaven Fasting, by E. M. Delafield (1950)
Color variations on Holiday Library jackets include blue and pale green (in addition to brick red).
