Books on Coventry

Interesting that there might be different versions Anne. Mine has no date of printing but it has a comment under one of the businesses about the upcoming business year of 1896.

My apologies Helen, I don't know where I got that date from so I have gone through the book and at the end of the article for W B Turner and son the author says "and we may in conclusion, strongly advise riders to inspect these admirable mounts before finally deciding on a selection for the fast approaching season of 1896" . So that must be the date of mine as well. It seems strange to call a book up to date and then not saying what date !

The "Coventry Up-To-Date" I have is only a "reprint" version, sadly (I must change the bibliography description!). It's really not much more than a pamphlet, containing 25 pages. I'll keep my eyes peeled for a copy on eBay or elsewhere though.

No need to apologise Anne, dating stuff is very difficult. You probably got the date from whoever sold it to you. We've all done that. I'll try to remember to bring my copy with me next time I come. The Herbert seems to have a copy here.

All the pages. The next best thing !

I have just bought a newly published book called 'The 14th November 1940 A-Z' by Grace Bullingham. She is a young freelance photographer who has lived in Coventry all her life and says 'I know that the bombings is a huge part of the city that brings a lot of the community together today as well as back then. I have researched their deaths, family history, found imagery and contextual information'. The book gives biographical information on a selected number of blitz victims especially where several members of the same family died. It contains a lot of detail that is available elsewhere, including here on Historic Coventry (which is duly credited as a source) but is well-presented and has only a small number of typos which sadly many self-published books contain. It is available on Ebay for £9 with free postage: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/404757115843?itmmeta=01HQBNP5M0Z2PMQG24DE9K8ZQ3&hash=item5e3d....

With a lot of books selling on Ebay, it makes increasing sense to self publish. My main gripe is that photos in them tend to be lower quality. Typos tend to pass me by but getting it wrong on the blurb on the back is a bit of a blooper.

I've just bought that book, too, direct from Grace's online little shop, which she told me about. She also kindly supplied me with a few of the personal and family photos for displaying on the Blitz victims.

I agree, sadly some self-published books have very poor photographic reproductions, probably due to financial restraints. But Grace, being a photographer herself, presumably is well up on the best ways to present/ layout etc.

Clearly Grace is a very enterprising young woman and I wish her success with this new venture. She has also produced a booklet on the History of Earlsdon Library.

Some of the drawings have been chopped, sadly, but some interesting online reading here from The history of Coventry, being a concise account of the ancient institutions, customs, & public buildings, of the city, and a complete epitome of modern changes; together with an appendix, including a copious and interesting chronology of local occurrences ... dated 1852! Not sure I've seen these before -

One large and fruitful source of images for me has been a collection of kids' sketches from the 1860s. One particularly annoying group of the same building all mention the Poddy Croft. There was nothing in the Poddy Croft. I finally worked out the building was actually the bottom of Greyfriars's Green, next to the Poddy. Tucked into Neil's picture above is another representation of the same building. Despite how the house was drawn, the map suggests that the gable on section was flush with the part of the building next to it. The funny little building with the chimney, in line with the garden wall was a wash house.

Ah, I have a very beaten-up copy of that Benjamin Poole book, and I did actually scan its lovely pictures and put them in "Rob's pics", along with dozens from his huge 1870 tome and one from his little 1847 first effort. However, I failed to label them adequately, so a search would not have come up with these two images above - sorry about that! To rectify this, I've just spent an hour or so labelling all the images from Poole's books so they can be found.... https://www.historiccoventryforum.co.uk/robs_pics/search.php?q=Poole+1852 Obviously replacing 1852 with either 1847 or 1870 will quickly find all the other images from those books - mostly drawn by Fred Taunton, but not all.