Nice Rowing Cover

On 10 November, 2010, on HTBS, I wrote about a book that I had found on an antiquarian bookseller’s site. The book had a very interesting and nice-looking cover showing some school boys in a racing shell in the background and two other boys in the foreground watching them racing. At least one of the boys in the foreground is a rowers as he is holding an oar. When I ordered the book, I was hoping that there would be a ‘rowing story’ in the book, which was not the case.

Well, the other week, I did it again, ordered another juvenile book, Monster Book for Boys (Dean & Son, Ltd) with a ‘rowing cover’ hoping to find a good rowing story in the book – not so! But also this cover is nice, I think: a boy biking along the towpath holding a megaphone by his mouth shouting instruction to the boys in the shell on the river. There is no printing year, but it was probably published in the 1940s (someone has neatly penciled in 24/10/44 on the inside cover). It is difficult to find information about the publishers, but it seems that the ‘Monster Book’ was published annually; there was also ‘Monster Book for Girls’.