Sixpence worth of knowledge

The contents of Fishguard's church hall were being flogged off today (the building having been purchased for private use) and my steps inexorably led me in the direction of the sale.

Mismatched crockery, superannuated electrical equipment, battered old chairs and boxes of dusty volumes of Welsh sermons and missionary lives were not appealing but this collection of Benn's Sixpenny Library titles took my fancy. Apart from making a nice photograph I found the 'library' to be an intriguing notion: each small paper-bound booklet, of no more than 80 pages, was devoted to a single topic of science, literature, the arts and ideas, introduced by a leading expert or great mind of the day (1927 to 1931), accessibly but comprehensively presented, and priced to be affordable by people on a low wage, autodidacts keen to increase their knowledge and learn about subjects that their own education failed to cover (at a time when the school leaving age was only 14.) I could imagine farmers, nurses, miners, soldiers and typists poring over these little volumes at the end of their working days, grasping after ideas and expanding their minds as we now do by means of a variety of electronic devices as well as plain old books.

I came away with 10 titles which, at 5 for a pound, probably represents an even lower equivalent price that the original one. So, I shall be well informed upon: The Mind and its Workings, Russian Literature, The History of Russia, Chemistry, Poisons, Fungi, Insects, English Folklore, The Origins of Agriculture and The Polar Regions.

See LARGER to read the titles.