The Rainbow Annual 1940

The Rainbow Annual 1940 

By various (the Amalgamated Press)
No ISBN

I’m going to try a little experiment here. Normally I’d review graphic novels and trade paperback collections with a view to the reader and potential purchaser hopefully becoming a fan or even addict of the picture-strip medium. Here though, in conjunction with the entry for The Children’s Annual, I thought I’d apply my modern critical sensibilities to one of the landmark items featured in that wonderful book. If you’re lucky enough to stumble across a copy or indeed any other vintage volume, I hope my words convince you to acquire it. However, the real purpose is to create a ground swell.

So much magical material is out there in print limbo. Great writing and art is rotting in boxes and attics or the archives of publishing houses, when it needs to be back in the hands of readers once again. On one level the tastes of the public have never been more catholic than today and a sampling of our popular heritage will always appeal to some part of the mass consumer base.

Let’s make copyright owners aware that there’s money to be made – not too much, I’ll admit, but some – from these slices of our childhood. You start the petition… I’ll certainly sign it.

The Rainbow Annual for 1940 was released by The Amalgamated Press just as the Second World War began to bite in Home Front Britain (the dating was year-forward on these bumper, hard-backed premium editions so the 1940 book would have been released in the Autumn of 1939).

The undisputed star was the phenomenally popular Tiger Tim and his gang of chums The Bruin Boys. Tim had first appeared in the Daily Mirror in 1904, and graduated to the weekly Playbox supplement of ‘The World and His Wife’ (from 1909). The Rainbow weekly colour comic began in February 1914 and Tim was the cover feature until its demise in 1956. In 1919 Tiger Tim’s Weekly (née Tales) also launched and he had been the star of his own annual since 1921 (first annual dated 1922 – got it now?). The characters were so popular that Britains (the toy soldier makers) launched a line of lead figures to sell alongside their more militaristic fare.

The line-up includes not only the anthropomorphic Tim and Co. (with four strip adventures and two prose stories) but also the Two Pickles (a mischievous brother and sister who eventually spawned their own movie franchise represented here with three strips), as well as such cartoon fare as the Dolliwogs, Mrs Bruin’s Boarding School, magical Mr. Marzipan and the Woolly Boys, alongside individual children’s staples such as detectives, school stories and nautical tales, past and present.

Most notable for its difference to the poor modern substitutes that still issue forth every year is the preponderance of text stories and puzzles on offer. Fully 61 of the 104 pages are made up of one, two and three page prose stories of fairy-tales, historical and sea-faring adventures, westerns and all the other kinds of trauma-free yarns meant to thrill while creating a love of reading.

The page counts were reduced during the war years and immediately after, although paper rationing often meant differing types of paper-stock produced books that were often physically thicker, not thinner, than normal – a big psychological boost come Christmas morning I’m sure.

Content might raise a few eyebrows these days. Popular fiction from a populist publisher will always embody some underlying assumptions unpalatable to some modern readers, but good taste was always a watchword when producing work for younger children and some interactions between white children and other races is a little utopian, perhaps. A more insidious problem might arise from the accepted class-structures in some of the stories and the woefully un-PC sexism through-out. All we can hope for is that the reader uses judgement and perspective when viewing or revisiting material this old. Just remember Thomas Jefferson kept slaves and it’s only been unacceptable to beat your wife since the 1980’s.

Before I go off on one let’s return to the subject at hand and say that despite all the restrictions and codicils this is a beautiful piece of children’s entertainment in the time-honoured fashion of Enid Blyton, Dodie Smith and Arthur Ransome with lovely illustrations that would make any artist weep with envy.

You and your kids deserve the chance to see it for yourself.

© 1940 The Amalgamated Press.
Which I’m assuming is now part of IPC Ltd., so © 2007 IPC Ltd.