Stella & Rose's Books

I have recently been pricing up a large collection of Children’s books. In amongst them were two items illustrated by Willebeek Le Mair. I loved the illustrations. Similar to Mabel Lucie Attwell (my favourite illustrator), Henriette seems to be able to capture the beauty and innocence of little children so well in her elegant watercolour illustrations. I decided to do a little research on her and this is what I found.

Henriette was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1889. Both of her parents were themselves artists and they greatly influenced her as a child by writing verses for her to illustrate. Another important influence on Henriette’s artistic development was the French illustrator Maurice Boutet de Monvel (himself greatly influenced by English illustrator Kate Greenaway) as her parents took Henriette to visit De Monvel in Paris for advice.

We may not all be familiar with the title ‘Kinder – und Hausmarchen’, but you will be familiar with the Folk Tales within – Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, the list goes on!

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were German academics who collected and published folklore and their first book was published in 1812.

In 1796, when the brothers were quite young, their father died. As a result they experienced great hardship growing up, but they worked hard at school and excelled in their studies.

What a contrast! Where can we find that kind of variety in the natural world? In the world of insects! Over one million species of insects have been discovered and described but it is estimated that there may be as many as 10 million species on earth.  There are approximately 1.4 billion insects for every person on Earth and the total weight of all the insects is about 70 times more than all the people. Wow! What amazing statistics from the Royal Entomological Society! Aren’t we glad that insects are such tiny creatures….

My late husband, Cliff, and I were keen natural history photographers, but while he usually had his camera pointed upwards to the sky, capturing birds in flight, mine was pointed towards the ground where the insects were going about their daily business. I’ve always been fascinated by these little creatures, although when young I did have a fear of spiders. (Yes, I know they are not insects but for the purpose of this article I am including them). Since having a tarantula as a pet and my daughter having 100 of them (really!)  I have grown out of that fear. The only fear I have now is the fear of hurting them if I pick them up to relocate them!

Born on 14th December 1892 in Burma to parents who were methodist missionaries, of the first four years of his life he has no recollection. Having been seriously injured in the upper spine, he and his sister were sent back to the UK in 1897. What had happened remains a mystery to this day. Did they fall from their pony? Fall down the stairs during a game of make-believe? Or was it a more serious event caused by their ‘ayah’ who was responsible for them at the time? Whatever the cause, his parents would not reveal it, and Bestall, although not crippled, was left with partial speech paralysis and a persistent stutter.

I am extremely lucky where I work, as the view from my desk overlooks Tintern Abbey and the surrounding Wye Valley countryside which is stunning.  I was aware of a poem called “A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” written by William Wordsworth so thought it would be interesting to find out a bit more about it.

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the Lake District town of Cockermouth and was the second of five children.  Both his parents had died before he was fifteen, so the children were left in the care of different relatives.  It was in 1795, when he received a legacy from a close relative, that he and his sister Dorothy moved to Dorset and two years later moved to Somerset to be near the poet Samuel Coleridge.  In 1799 they then moved to Grasmere in the Lake District, to Dove Cottage, and it is here that he wrote his famous poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. In 1802 he married his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson and together they had five children.  In 1813 they moved from Grasmere to Ambleside where he remained until his death in 1850 aged eighty.

We are very lucky in that we have a very nice little camper van (a VW T6) to use for our holidays. Last year we did a tour of Italy, this year we decided to travel a little closer to home and visit Scotland. We planned to follow the NC500 (North Coast 500) route but knew that we wouldn’t have time to seriously enjoy ourselves if we attempted to do the whole 500 miles from Inverness to Inverness.  We therefore decided to follow the route travelling the west coast of Scotland and just see how far we got.

Whilst idly staring at a shelf of Ferrari books, (and daydreaming of owning one), a question popped into my head: which are there more of - actual Ferrari cars, or books about the iconic vehicles?

Before we attempt to answer that conundrum, a very brief history about this famous brand.

After working as a racing driver for Fiat and Alfa Romeo, Enzo Ferrari set up Scuderia Ferrari in 1929. Scuderia Ferrari was effectively the racing division of Alfa Romeo and was very successful in the pre-war years.

After a disagreement with Alfa's managing director, Ferrari left in 1939 and founded Auto-Avio Costruzioni, a company supplying parts to other racing teams. With the outbreak of World War II, Ferrari's factory was forced to undertake war production for Mussolini's fascist government. At the end of the war, Ferrari decided to start making cars bearing his name, and founded Ferrari S.p.A. in 1947. Initially, Ferrari existed to build (and race) racing cars. However, to finance his racing endeavours, the company soon started selling sports cars.

“What dull men are those that tarry at home,When abroad they might wantonly rome, (sic)And gain such experience, and spy tooSuch Countries, and Wonders as I do.  – Cowley”

Excerpt from Highways and Byways in Northamptonshire and Rutland, by H. A. Evans (1918)

We sell a number of different types of old guidebooks in our shop and one of my favourites is the ‘Highways and Byways’ series, each with numerous illustrations, some by noted artists. The ‘Highways and Byways’ series includes 36 pocket-sized regional guides which were hugely popular in their day.  They had very distinct branding (before the word branding existed), which made them instantly noticeable, with their dark green covers (blue for the later editions) and gilt writing on the front and spine. 

We are having to get used to the frequency and ferocity of storms. We have currently experienced more than seven storms this winter already. With this information in mind, I was very interested in an article about a shipwreck off Porth Alerth near Moelfre on Anglesey that was instrumental in the creation of the shipping forecast. As often happens, tragedy leads to a catalyst for change.

In British weather history, the Royal Charter Storm of 1859 was a devastating tempest off the west coast of Britain which played a pivotal role in the founding of the shipping forecast and has had an enduring impact on weather forecasting in the UK and beyond.

Is it too early to talk about holidays? – I don’t think it is, it’s how we get through the winter months.

I am off for a short break to Yorkshire in the Spring, York to be precise. York comes from the Viking name for the city, Jorvik and shire comes from an old English or Nordic word.

I have been to York before, but not for many years now, and I am eager to reacquaint myself with all it has to offer or as much as can be accomplished in a weekend.

I have been asked to write an article for the Stella & Rose’s Books monthly newsletter and, as it is my first one, I thought what better than to write about a particular type of book of which I have quite a few!  I imagine that many readers will also have at least one in their collection or have seen them.  I am referring to Haynes Workshop Manuals. 

John Haynes OBE, founder of the Haynes Publishing Group, published the first manual in 1965 for the Austin-Healey Sprite. This was after he had been asked to help rebuild a Frogeye Sprite and realised that the official factory manual was not designed to help the average car owner.  He captured the rebuild process by taking step by step photographs and he linked these to exploded diagrams which became the trademark of the Haynes manuals.

You would be forgiven for never having heard the name Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, an Australian illustrator of children’s fiction (I am writing this from the UK). At the turn of the 20th century, she was well known for bringing fairies and other magical creatures to life, using mainly pen and ink and watercolour. Fairies, brownies, elves, and witches interact with the animals of the Australian outback. When she died in 1960, her fame was dwindling, as artistic tastes of children turned to focus on the less naïve.

Recently, my brother-in-law invited me on a day’s walk in the Brecon Beacons in Wales. Being unable to resist the allure of the mountains, I immediately agreed. So, on a cold, crisp November morning I found myself in the carpark just below the disused Neuadd reservoirs.

The plan for the walk was to combine our shared love of walking the mountains with some bird watching and a sneaky detour to find the wreckage of a crashed WW2 Spitfire. During the winter months Snow Buntings leave their ‘summer’ breeding grounds in the Arctic and head south. They can occasionally be found on the high moorlands of the Beacons – parts of our walk would take us through some perfect habitat. We also wanted to keep an eye out for Red Grouse.

If you are interested in books on a particular subject, it can be hard to find the books that interest you through general searches on websites.  On the Stella and Rose’s Books website we provide a number of features to help with this.  In case you haven’t come across these features on our website search before, here is some information to get you started.

Search by Category

Categories is a powerful search feature we have on the website.  Every book at Stella & Rose’s is assigned one or more categories with the primary category dictating where you find the book in the shop and also where it ‘lives’ on the website.

When I took over the buying of books from Cliff & Chris more than ten years ago (that is, everything except children's which is Maria’s speciality), I never would have guessed how many military type books there are! I say type as many end up on the history shelves as opposed to the military shelves, also the aviation shelves, and the maritime shelves… It is hard to know where to draw the line when military becomes history. I try to stick to a rule of thumb that our military shelves are from World War I subjects onwards, anything before that goes into history or, sometimes, our transport shelves but it doesn’t always work out that way!

I recently went to the USA to visit my family in Houston, Texas whom I had not seen for nine years. As with so many others I had planned a trip in 2020 which had to be postponed.

It was a fairly laid-back holiday as Dad is getting on in years, so nothing energetic was on the cards, which is just as well as the lead up to the trip was a whole other adventure. Aiming to go soon after the New Year is madness when you have Christmas to sort out as well as planning a trip. I won’t be doing that again!

Are you fascinated by water? I don’t mean the wet stuff that falls from the sky, but the places it ends up – in streams, rivers, lakes and the ocean. I’ve always had a fascination for water and the life contained in and around it. When travelling I try to look for a place to stay near a river as you can guarantee there will be something interesting to look at.

When I was young, many moons ago, my aunt and uncle lived in a house that had a tiny stream at the bottom of the garden, I loved going down there, ever hopeful that I might find a minnow or two, or some kind of fishy life. Sadly, it was quite devoid of water life but it didn’t put me off!

Errol Le Cain was born in Singapore in 1941 and shortly afterwards moved to Agra in India.

Although Errol Le Cain had no formal art training he showed an obvious talent from an early age.

He first showed an interest in film making and at the age of eleven made a short film called "The Enchanted Mouse" and then at the age of fifteen another film called "The Little Goatherd".

This brought him to the attention of the agents of the film distributor Pearl and Dean, so in 1956 at the tender age of 15 they paid his passage from Singapore to London to start a career in film and television animation.

Vera Southgate (birth name Pegg) was born in County Durham in March 1916 and was raised alongside her sister Mary. Both sisters would eventually train and become teachers in their own right. Vera's career was varied, and she taught children of many ages including infant, junior, secondary and also at special schools. 

In 1942 she married Arthur Southgate and stopped teaching for a while.  Sadly, Vera was widowed only six years later in 1948 and, having no children, she returned to teaching, this time in Manchester where she met and married her second husband Douglas Thomas Booth in 1961.  Despite this, Vera kept the surname 'Southgate' for most of her published works.

Eleanor Farjeon (known to her family as Nellie), was born in London on 13th of February 1881 to a talented and artistic literary family.  Her father Benjamin Leopold Farjeon was himself an author, while her mother Margaret was a daughter of the American actor Joseph Jefferson.  Eleanor was their only daughter and had three brothers.

Being born into such gifted family, her writing was encouraged from a very young age, and although having no formal education but rather being home taught, this did not prevent her from writing a full story, 'Kitty's Dream' at just six years of age.  Farjeon's writing was not just limited to one genre, she also wrote poetry, plays, children’s and adult novels as well as short stories, essays and non-fiction articles along with operas and operettas. Her audience, therefore, was vast and varied.