Ladybird Books from jobbing printers to global brand

Introduction

I’m pretty sure I first met Wim in passing at the inaugural Loogabaroogoo Festival of Illustrated Children’s Literature, which was held around the town during the October half term of 2015 – but it could have been at a later one, as several took place! Or it might even have been at the Charnwood Museum Being Human event a few years later! Anyway, for the past couple of years we’ve both been part of a project taking place at the bellfoundry, so we’ve had plenty of time to share Loughborough stories!

A Ladybird reading corner

Although there has been much written about the topic of Wim’s guest blog post – even huge books, and even a guest blog post earlier this year! - Wim looks at the history of that iconic Loughborough firm, Ladybird Books, and explains how and when the children’s books came about, and what it was that actually made the firm so special! Read on for a most interesting story!

Ladybird Books -- from Jobbing Printers to Global Brand

Wim Van Mierlo (Loughborough University)

As a book historian working at the University, I naturally became interested in the ‘phenomenon’ that is Ladybird Books.  Because Ladybird is so deeply embedded in the history of our town, the story of the company’s founding is already quite very well known – not least for readers of Lynne’s blog. Yet what few people know is actually how special – that is to say: unusual -- that history is as a publishing venture. No disrespect to Loughborough or the great people who worked for Ladybird in their time.  But as someone who knows a thing or two about the history of publishing in the UK, I am struck time and again how extraordinary the Ladybird story in fact was. No other city, let alone a market town, outside of London can boast a publishing success equal to that of Ladybird. At the height of their fame, they churned out some 500,000 books per week.

Ladybird Books on display at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery 2019

In every respect, Ladybird was not supposed to happen. And yet it did. The brand’s success is due to the company’s business-savvy directors who knew their trade and were able to adapt themselves to changing fortunes. Until such time, unfortunately, the market sadly outwitted them in the 1990s.

Let me begin, however, with a factual correction. The date on the green plaque outside the Carillon shopping centre on Market Street is unfortunately wrong. The first Ladybird book did not roll off the presses in 1915, but shortly before 27 August 1914.  We know this from the date stamp in the copy that was sent to British Museum Library for legal deposit.

Leicestershire County Council green plaque on the entrance to the Carillon shopping centre

This date is important, for it also puts into question the company’s own account of why it ventured into publishing children’s picture books. According to company lore, Wills and Hepworth wanted to keep the presses running following the outbreak of War. But hostilities were only declared on 4 August. The time in between is very short, so it is quite likely that the decision to make picture books was taken earlier.

Wills and Hepworth were what in the industry are known as jobbing printers. They were not ‘publishers’ in the strict sense of the word; they printed anything that needed printing – both letterpress and lithography. Jobbing would remain the mainstay – and very profitable side – of the business for decades yet. One of their most important clients was the midlands automotive industry, whose catalogues they printed.

Title page from the 1901 Wills Almanac, published by Henry Wills

Two factors, however, were important for the future success of Ladybird books.

First, Wills and Hepworth were not afraid of diversifying. They did not just run a printshop. They offered a variety of services, from selling stationery to picture framing. They also ran a bookshop, which included a branch of Mudie’s famous circulating library. In the 1920s, as the business accounts now at the Leicestershire Record Office show, they even produced advertising stills for cinemas throughout the Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Picture books were another – in many respects quite bold – way to diversify their business activity.

A Ladybird book bench in Loughborough's Queen's Park

The publishing of books is not something that jobbing printers normally get into. (The publishing industry is to this day very London-centric.) The publishing of picture books is even less of an obvious choice.  The market for children’s books was a busy one. However – and this is the second factor in the success of Ladybird books – Wills and Hepworth recognized an opportunity that tallied with their expertise. Because so much of their printing work involved what today we call ‘graphic design’, they had the equipment and the know-how to combine letterpress and simple engravings suitable for the production of picture books. Compared to other children’s books of the time, Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1914) and Tiny Tots Travels (1914), and all other early Ladybird titles were simple if not rather crude affairs. Nonetheless, these early books sturdy, but cheap to produce. Wills and Hepworth in fact made use of an age-old trick in the book trade. By recycling images and stories from one book to the next, the firm could regularly put out new titles without having to worry too much about creating new content.

Some Ladybird books

It is clear they thought their picture books should not distract them from the main business. The production of picture books remained a sideline, was picked up again during the Second World War, only to be set aside once more in peacetime. Paper shortages during the war at least prompted Wills and Hepworth to ‘invent’ the new iconic format: a single sheet of paper printed on both sides and then folded in a book of 52 pages. This ‘chapbook’ format had been the staple of cheap, popular reading since at least the seventeenth century. Wills and Hepworth knew their trade. Even so, it took the firm until 1953 to develop their magic formula of cheap, but good-quality picture books with interesting and informative content were absent from the market.

Advert for Ladybird Books in Wills' Loughborough Almanac for 1941

Wills and Hepworth remained jobbing printers until 1971, when they finally dedicated themselves full-time to Ladybird Books. The company legally changed its name to Ladybird Books Ltd. [1] and moved its operation from Angel Yard, where Henry Wills had started his printing business in 1873, to Windmill Road [2].

The Beeches Road Ladybird Books factory, now Anstey Wallpapers

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NOTES

[1] The resolution ‘that the name of the Company be changed to Ladybird Books Limited, was passed at an Extraordinary General Meeting, held on 22nd September 1972 somewhere on Derby Square, Loughborough.

[2] Today we know Ladybird Books was situated on Beeches Road, at the far end, towards the canal, and close to what is now Windmill Road. At one time, the whole length of Beeches Road, from the White House on the corner with Leicester Road, to the exit onto Great Central Road was once all called Windmill Road. The address for the new factory can be found quoted in different places as either Beeches Road or Windmill Road, which could be because at the early planning stages, it might not have been decided on the orientation of the actual factory building, nor whether the factory would be closest to Beeches Road or at the end of Windmill Road, close to Great Central Road. If you think about the site today, which is occupied by the Anstey Wallpaper Company, the factory faces onto Beeches Road, while the vehicle entrance (transport lorries, and cars heading towards the car park) is side on to Windmill Road, but it could so easily have been the other way round!

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Sources

Be sure to catch the guest blog post about Henry Wills, written by the Chair of the Loughborough Library Local Studies Volunteers, in August 2023. 

You can read more about Ladybird Books over on the Ladybird Fly Away Home website

In 2019 I wrote a short piece about Ladybird Books as part of a bigger article on Loughborough firms. 

Other books about Ladybird Books include:

Johnson, Lorraine (2014). The Ladybird story: children's books for everyone. London: British Library

Zeegan, Lawrence (2015). Ladybird by design: 100 years of words and pictures. London: Ladybird Books.

Ladybird: a cover story - 500 iconic covers (n.d.). London: Ladybird Books

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About Wim

Wim joined Loughborough University in 2015, and since then has contributed to the teaching on the Publishing and English programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is also Programme Director for Publishing, Digital Lead for the School of the Arts, English and Drama; and co-leader of DH@Lboro, our digital humanities research group.

Much of his work concentrated on 'Modernism' and the early twentieth century, but his interests range across the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Wim has published about William Wordsworth, W. B. Yeats, T. Sturge Moore, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Thomas Pynchon, and Fred D'aguiar. Wim's primary area of expertise is in the study of literary manuscripts and archives, but he also works on textual scholarship and scholarly editing, reception history, literary history and literary heritage, marginalia, writers' libraries, digital humanities, poetry, Irish studies, and photography.

Wim is President of the European Society for Textual Scholarship and Editor of the Society’s journal Variants.

See more on the Loughborough University website.

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Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

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